


Acts of Mercy

by thyrza



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M, M/M, Time Travel, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-29
Updated: 2012-06-30
Packaged: 2017-11-08 20:22:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/447156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thyrza/pseuds/thyrza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternate telling of 01x12, 'Captain Jack Harkness' - instead of Jack, Ianto is taken to 1941 with Toshiko.  [Originally posted on LiveJournal as a WIP; will be continued and finished on AO3.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kiss the Boys Goodbye

Traffic is slow today, and Ianto navigates the SUV toward Sage Street with little trouble. Tosh is in the passenger seat, chatting in Japanese on her mobile, while he politely tries not to listen. He'd been a little grateful, honestly, when the phone rang; Tosh had spent the last several minutes before that giving him directions two seconds ahead of the vehicle's sophisticated satnav system.  
  
They work well together in the office, but this is the first time either of them have worked solely with the other out in the field. Truth be told, Tosh is not what Ianto typically thinks of as a field agent. She's a genius, undoubtedly the most knowledgeable of any of them except Jack, but in the way of terribly intelligent people, she seems to lack a certain sort of common sense. And Ianto is a bit uncertain about his own assignment to this task, considering his experience in the field is limited, at best.  
  
Ianto finds himself with more questions than answers this morning, regardless. Jack had helped him into his coat, given him a lover's kiss goodbye, and then a reassuring word on the assignment that had undoubtedly been from Jack his captain. Ianto still isn't quite sure when he began to separate the two in his mind, or what it means that he has. There's something comfortable about it, though it's just as dangerous as it is comfortable. He thinks sometimes that he might be getting too close to Jack, thinking of the captain in a possessive sense, when surely Jack isn't the type who can be tied down.  
  
" _Hai, hai_ \-- Ianto, up here."  
  
Ianto breaks out of his reverie and parks the Range Rover on the curb across from the old Ritz dance hall.  
  
Tosh finishes her phone call and puts her mobile away as they get out. She reaches for her laptop in the floorboard, but Ianto takes the strap and slings the case over his own shoulder.  
  
"Here, let me."  
  
"Thanks." Tosh offers her usual shy smile, then gets back to business as they head across the street. "So, what do we know about this place?"  
  
Ianto pushes open the doors, laden with fliers for small, local band gigs and a campaign poster beseeching 'Vote Graham,' and waves his hand to clear the stirring-up of dust. "The Ritz dance hall ... according to my research, opened in 1932, enjoyed the height of its popularity during World War II. Suffered a gradual decline until being closed for good in 1989, and currently due to be demolished in a week. There have been reports of people seeing ghosts, lately. Jack thought it merited looking at."  
  
"I don't believe in ghosts, but ... let's see what the readings for Rift activity have to say." Tosh pulls a boxy, hand-held scanner from her bag.  
  
Ianto raises his eyebrows. "New kit?"  
  
"Just a little something I whipped up." She hesitates. "Um ... Jack doesn't know about it, yet, so if you could just --"  
  
"Of course."  
  
They sweep the foyer, then head up the massive staircase that dominates the place. The banister is solid wood, scratched and worn shiny with thousands of hands passing over it through the years. At the top, there's a grand ballroom with a large chandelier hanging overhead. A few tables line the perimeter, chairs turned up with legs sticking into the air, and all of it covered in sheets.  
  
Ianto pauses and looks over the overhang to the floor below, which was probably once a bar. "Jack will be disappointed. He probably would have looked right at home here."  
  
"He should have come, then," Tosh murmurs distractedly, making a quick turn of the ballroom with her scanner.  
  
Ianto turns around, expectantly watching her work. "Anything?"  
  
"No." She holds up the scanner to show the negative results on-screen. "I don't think there's anything here. We might as well go."  
  
They make it half the way back downstairs before the music reaches them; not contemporary, but the full and brassy sound of an old fashioned big band.  
  
"Did you hear that?" Tosh asks.  
  
Ianto nods, glancing back up the stairs. "Our ghosts have excellent timing. Shall we?"  
  
The ballroom is completely transformed by the time they reach it. The chandelier has flared to life, couples are twirling on the dance floor, and a chanteuse behind the microphone serenades to the sounds of her backing band. There are soldiers everywhere, enlisted men and officers alike, pretty girls with their floral dresses and victory rolls in their hair.  
  
"They look so ... real," Ianto breathes out. He edges instinctively along the banister, trying not to get in the way.  
  
Tosh is silent for a moment. "They're not ghosts," she finally says, holding up the scanner.  
  
Ianto isn't entirely certain how to read the new piece of equipment, but notices a spike in the normal pattern displayed on the screen. He looks more closely at their surroundings and realizes that everything looks different. The tables and chairs are uncovered, people sitting at them and chatting. He can smell brandy and cigar smoke in the air, perfume mingled with the sweat of too many people in one room.  
  
"We should get out of here," he suggests.  
  
Tosh nods agreement, and heads back down the staircase. Ianto instinctively tugs her elbow to move her out of the way of one of the couples moving up the stairs. He finds it encouraging that no one has bothered looking at them funny or acknowledging their presence, yet; maybe something is just ... out of sync.  
  
"Do come again." There's an old man in a cravat beside the open door, and he's talking to them.  
  
Ianto can feel the man's eyes on his back as they walk out of the building; he can't imagine how out of place they must look with Tosh's lit-up scanner box and his own earpiece in. The street outside is dark and deserted, and his heart sinks. The SUV is missing from the curb, and a glance up at the sky confirms that it's several hours later than his watch indicates.  
  
"Ianto ... look."  
  
He turns to where Tosh is pointing, and sees the poster: _Kiss the Boys Goodbye Dance: January 21, 1941._  
  



	2. I'll Be Seeing You

The Hub is quiet while Jack makes his Sunday morning rounds, filled only with the sounds of idling computers and Myfanwy shifting about in her nest. It's too early for everyone to be in yet, especially for the weekend, and Jack is content enough to allow them the occasional late morning. The downtime allows Jack the opportunity to momentarily let down his guard as captain and simply be himself. It reminds him of his early days as leader, trying to find his footing and build his first team at the turn of the century.  
  
This morning, however, he finds Owen asleep on the couch, still smelling of beer and what might be the perfume of some attempted pull from the night before. The doctor has been through a great deal lately, and while Jack does not agree with Owen's method of forgetting, he can sympathize with the motivation behind it. Diane's leaving had been difficult; Jack had written off the seriousness of it, at first, doubtful that Owen would grow so close to a woman in such a short time, but Owen's reaction makes it clear that at least some genuine emotion had been felt.  
  
Jack finds a blanket and drapes it over Owen, and leaves him to sleep, moving over to Toshiko's station next. Tosh had undoubtedly been Jack's finest hiring decision: clever -- no, _brilliant_ \-- loyal, and genuinely fascinated by her work. Her gratitude over being free doesn't hurt, and while Jack no longer holds a thing like springing her from prison as a trump card, he can sympathize with the desire for freedom more than anything. The Rift monitoring software -- Toshiko's greatest accomplishment so far, he thinks proudly -- shows little by way of the readings scrolling by. The Rift seems to be just as quiet as the Hub, this morning; Jack likes to tentatively believe it is granting them a day of peace. He has been in Cardiff, worked for Torchwood, long enough to know that while such things may be rare, they are not unheard of.  
  
Jack glances over Gwen's workstation, neat with the sort of tidiness she probably learned from being a police constable. He smiles faintly at the little reminders of a life outside work: a magazine she'd been flipping through during an off hour, photographs of her and her boyfriend, a sticky note reminding herself to pick up bread on the way home (he wonders if she remembered).  
  
He moves back toward his office, and is surprised to find Ianto there, leaning over the desk. Jack pauses in the doorway to admire the view, watching as Ianto sets down a cup of coffee, gathers up the outbound paperwork, and places more in the inbound tray.  
  
"Ianto Jones," Jack says with a grin. "Just the man I wanted to see."  
  
Ianto doesn't startle, but straightens up and grants Jack a small, enigmatic smile. "Missing your morning coffee?"  
  
"Something." Jack retrieves the mug from the desk and flips through the sheaf of new paperwork with a groan. "Is the Prime Minister's office even supposed to be _in_ on Sunday?"  
  
"No," Ianto answers patiently. "Those forms are from three days ago. The most recent ones are on the bottom, from UNIT, e-mailed over last night. I took the liberty of printing them out for you."  
  
Attention wandering, Jack gravitates over to his old turntable and peruses the records in the cabinet beneath. "Great. I might even get to all that today. The Rift looks quiet."  
  
"I did pick up an unusual police report."  
  
Jack produces a half-century old album from its careworn cover, and carefully places the needle down on the record. A soft scratching precludes the start of the music, low and jazzy. "Weevils?"  
  
"Actually, strange happenings at that old dance hall on Sage Street." Ianto sounds skeptical from where he sits perched just on the edge of the desk. "Possibly a publicity stunt. It's been condemned, getting torn down in a few days."  
  
"Any details on what constitutes 'strange'?" Jack questions, closing the distance between Ianto and himself.  
  
"It's said to be haunted. Ghosts, noises ... old music." Ianto cocks his head in the direction of the turntable. "Something like that, I'd imagine. Glenn Miller?"  
  
"Benny Goodman." Jack winds his arms around Ianto's waist, and tugs the other man close, drifting in a four-step square away from the desk. He hums along with the music, _sometimes I'm happy, sometimes I'm blue_ ; it's not an uncommonly covered song. Dozens of artists must have done it, but back then, in the days where music was an art, it didn't matter, everyone made it unique. How many times has he danced to the same songs, with different people? It's always unique.  
  
Ianto easily keeps up with the dance, but Jack isn't surprised. He'd long ago realized that Ianto Jones is the most adaptable of his team; the drifting on his CV, Jack thinks, probably had little to do with the inability to keep a job and more with the inability of a job to hold Ianto's interest. Though young -- not even yet twenty-five -- Ianto has proven himself. Jack simply wishes now that Ianto would see the same potential in himself, and develop more confidence in his abilities.  
  
"Jack, I --" Tosh's voice interrupts them a split second before she realizes she might be intruding on something. She draws back toward the door, flushed with embarrassment. "Sorry, I'll come back later."  
  
Jack stops and Ianto steps away with practiced ease. This is a dance they've perfected, going back to looking as if they're doing nothing more than working, though Jack can't help a little bit of a grin as he sits down on the edge of his desk. "Nah, it's okay. Ianto, I think the ghost thing could be worth looking into. Why don't you head over to Sage Street?"  
  
Ianto hesitates, looking surprised.  
  
Jack doesn't think Ianto will protest, but heads it off anyway. "Toshiko, go with Ianto."  
  
Tosh hesitates now, opening her mouth and closing it again.  
  
He grins at her, eyes twinkling. "Don't worry, I haven't forgotten. Your train is leaving at ten, you're going to be gone for three days, and you'll be back in time for work Wednesday morning. Just a quick look around, and Ianto can drop you off at the station on the way back."  
  
Tosh allows a moment for the statement to sink in, then she beams at Jack. "I'll go get my bag. Ianto, I'll meet you out front?"  
  
Ianto nods. "Just let me get my coat."  
  
Waiting until the click-clack of Tosh's heels has faded, Jack takes the black overcoat down from the coat rack by his door and helps Ianto put it on.  
  
"Is this some sort of role reversal?" Ianto asks, sounding self-conscious and amused all at once.  
  
Jack takes his time, smoothing out the fabric with a private sort of pleasure, and leans down to rest his chin against the other man's shoulder. He presses himself against Ianto's back, arms winding around the narrow waist again. "It depends ... do I get to call you 'sir'?"  
  
Ianto flushes, embarrassment clear in his tone. "Jack ..."  
  
The smile Jack returns is unrepentant, and he tilts his head to nuzzle at Ianto's neck. "Wanna know a secret? I get more of a thrill out of hearing you call me that."  
  
"Jack," Ianto says again, and twists around in Jack's arms for a kiss. The kiss itself is a slow and languorous thing, and ends on a reluctant note when they both pull away. Ianto's eyes are heavy-lidded and his voice distracted as he waves in the direction of the door. "I should, um, go bring the SUV around."  
  
"Mm-hmm," Jack agrees, though rather unconvincingly, as he darts in to steal another quick kiss. They linger for a few seconds longer before he finally releases Ianto from his grasp and stands back.  
  
Ianto falters just short of leaving. "No good cop, bad cop for the ghosts, then?"  
  
Jack shakes his head, grinning. "Tell our ghostly friends I said hello."  
  
"Unlikely, but I'll let you know what we find." Ianto ducks his head in a self-conscious little nod and hurries for the door.  
  
"Ianto," Jack calls, his expression softening. "You'll do fine. I have faith in you."  
  
Ianto probably doesn't need the encouragement, not really, but his smile brightens and makes it all worthwhile, reminding Jack of how young he really is. Satisfied with himself, Jack watches on the CCTV until the SUV clears the Plass, and settles back in at his desk with his paperwork.  
  
\--  
  
Even as it begins to empty out, the ballroom looks little like it will some sixty-odd years in the future. There's no doubt the party is over; the barkeep gave last call half an hour ago, and the musicians are packing their instruments back into the cases. Many of the soldiers wandered off with their girlfriends, wives, or newfound lovers even before that, and now only a few small clusters are left mingling.  
  
Ianto sits with Tosh at the least conspicuous table they could find, although neither of them have managed to completely avoid social interaction this night. The fact that Toshiko is Japanese hardly seemed to bother most of the men, and in an effort to blend in as much as possible, Ianto had asked a few girls to dance as well.  
  
"What are we going to do?" Tosh frets with the strap of her laptop case. "People are going home."  
  
Disheartened that the others have not yet found a way to fix this, but not completely without optimism, Ianto is reluctant to leave the dance hall. Equally as much, he knows that they have nowhere to go, and no money to get by on; the currency has changed too much in the last seven decades. He looks up as a pair of shiny shoes, jutting out beneath perfectly creased blue trouser legs, stop in front of them.  
  
The American, Captain Jack Harkness, has an almost-smile crinkling at the corners of his eyes. They met him earlier in the evening and Ianto has spent a decisive amount of time since trying not to think about it. _Their_ Jack, back home at the Hub, is not as enigmatic or mysterious as he likes to think, and Ianto has long suspected from records and loose ends in the archives that the identity is an assumed one. However, to meet the man it was stolen from seems all too great a coincidence.  
  
There is little about this Jack Harkness that reminds Ianto of the Jack he left behind. He's charming, filled with apparent bravado, but there's the sort of modesty that their Jack's ego would not suffer, as if all the confidence is a very good veneer.  
  
"C'mon, kids," he says, though he must be younger than Tosh and certainly little older than Ianto himself. In this way, he is like Jack, assuming leadership and giving direction with a natural ease. "You can't spend the night in lover's corner."  
  
Ianto takes the initiative to stand, pushing away his embarrassment. "We just got in this morning," he lies, as smoothly as he might feed someone an anti-explanation on paranormal activity. "We were supposed to meet my brother and his wife here, but they haven't turned up. They just moved, and -- I'm embarrassed to say -- I don't have their new address."  
  
Tosh glances questioningly at him, but picking up on Ianto's intentions, she puts on a smile for the captain's benefit. "Is there a hotel in the area you could recommend us?"  
  
Another of the airmen -- Tim? -- the navigator who had earlier helped Tosh work out the coordinates of their location, has appeared. "No use in you doing that for one night," he says with a shy smile. "My family lives a few blocks from here, but my mum and sisters are all off in Swansea right now visiting my aunt. There would be more than enough room for you to stay with me and dad for the night."  
  
"Oh, we wouldn't want to impose," Ianto begins to argue on cue. He wants badly to warn the generous young man that Swansea will be obliterated in a month, but knows he can't. He wonders, errantly, how many times Jack has had to bite his tongue, what Jack knows that the rest of them don't, cryptically phrased: _when everything changes ..._  
  
"It's not a problem."  
  
"Tim is right," Captain Harkness interjects. "It's late and all the hotels are probably full." He raises his eyebrows in polite implication.  
  
Ianto and Tosh go through the elaborate motions of finally 'relenting' to something Ianto had been attempting to manipulate all along. While Tosh goes ahead with Tim and the captain, making polite conversation, Ianto lingers to gather up their things before following.  
  
 _"Ianto!"_  
  
It sounds exactly like Jack's voice, but an echo bouncing off glass. Ianto whirls around, but there's no one there and no sign of anything any more out of the ordinary than the fact that he's currently in 1941. He shrugs on his coat and jogs after Tosh and the others.  
  
\--  
  
Owen is standing at Tosh's station, arms folded across his chest and eyebrows lowered into a serious line, when Jack emerges from his office later that morning. Mainframe bleeps quietly, a red warning message flashing on the screen, alerting the user of new Rift activity. Jack comes up behind Owen and stares at it over the doctor's shoulder.  
  
"Of course it would finally show something when Tosh _isn't_ here to tell us what it means," Owen remarks.  
  
Jack clears the warning and watches the numeric language scroll by. "A spike in activity," he interprets, and taps his ear piece. "Tosh, need to pick your brain for just a second."  
  
The comms are unexpectedly silent. Jack glances down at his watch: half ten. Ianto should have been back by now. He picks up the phone and quickly dials.  
  
" _Hello, you've reached Ianto Jones. I'm unavailable at the moment, but --_ "  
  
" _Hi, this is Toshiko! I can't come to the phone right now, so --_ "  
  
Jack frowns, failing to raise either of them on their mobiles, and tries again to the same result. Neither of the phones even ring, simply go straight to voice mail as if switched off or out of signal range.  
  
"What is it?" Owen asks.  
  
"Tosh and Ianto went out two hours ago. Should've been back by now, and they're not answering me." Jack glances up at the screen with a heavy feeling of dread; he doesn't believe in simple coincidences. "Get your coat."  
  
Owen watches in bewilderment as Jack runs back around him to his office. "Why?"  
  
"We're going to the Ritz."  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song 'Sometimes I'm Happy (Sometimes I'm Blue)' was written by Vincent Youmans in 1927, and has since become a standard covered by many artists, but my favorite is by Joni Mitchell.


	3. Goodnight, Wherever You Are

"We should try to blend in," Ianto tells Tosh when they go back inside. This is easier said than done: he's the only man aside from the band or the old manager who isn't wearing a uniform, and he thinks that stands out more than the fact Tosh is Asian. Pearl Harbor hasn't happened yet, but pressure is on every young man to do his duty. The draft is nearly unnecessary, in that regard; everyone knows that if they don't defend the country, then all is lost. None are inclined to go down without a fight.  
  
Ianto tries to keep the same attitude in place, even as he anxiously wonders if the others have guessed -- or will guess -- anything close to what has happened. He doesn't want to let Tosh know just how worried he is, but knows she must sense his concern: it mirrors her own.  
  
"Do you think they've noticed we're missing?" Tosh asks after a few moments spent on the fringes of the dancing crowd.  
  
Ianto checks his watch. "It's still early. Jack probably won't start to wonder until after time for your train to run."  
  
Tosh is silent for a few seconds more. "But surely after that, they'll figure it out."  
  
He smiles tightly, tries to be reassuring. "What about the Rift manipulator?"  
  
"It's no good ..." She steps back to avoid a pair of soldiers squeezing past; one of them is busy staring at Tosh as he goes, but she either doesn't notice or ignores it. "I have the latest readings on my laptop."  
  
Ianto thinks about it a moment longer, then glances around. "Come on, let's find somewhere quiet. I have an idea."  
  
Neither of them pay much attention to the old man with the camera, taking a photo of a soldier and his girlfriend only feet away. They move down the hallway and duck into the first quiet, unlocked door, which proves to be an office. It's tidy and cluttered all at once, organized and crowded chaos, like the accumulation of many mismatched things over the course of a long life. The room reminds Ianto, with a pang of sudden and unexpected longing, of Jack's office.  
  
"All right," he states, drawing in a breath. "We know they're going to search here for us. If we could copy the coordinates down, leave them somewhere the others are likely to find them ..."  
  
"Got it." Tosh rushes to the desk and sets her laptop down, and fumbles around for a pen and paper. " _Your battery is running low_ ," the computer chimes unhelpfully.  
  
Ianto posts himself by the door to keep an eye out for anyone else coming in. "Do you need help?"  
  
"I don't think so." She pauses, shaking the fountain pen in frustration. "I'm not used to writing with these."  
  
"Here." He crosses to her and produces a ballpoint pen from his jacket pocket. "Use this."  
  
"Your battery is running low," the laptop states again, flashing a red warning signal. " _Your battery is --_ "  
  
Ianto watches in dismay as the screen powers off. "Did you get everything?"  
  
Tosh hastily closes the laptop and puts it back in her bag. "Yes. I just need to get our coordinates, now, to help them pinpoint the location." She hesitates, glancing up. "I hope this works."  
  
"It will," he answers with more confidence than he feels.  
  
The office door opens just as they turn to leave; Ianto starts, searching his mind for a good excuse as the manager walks in. "Sorry," he says, finally settling on none at all. "We were just going."  
  
The old man raises his eyebrows at them but doesn't comment, keen blue eyes watching as they pass. Ianto gives a polite little nod, and can't help but spare a glance at the unusual camera the manager is carrying, on his way out.  
  
\--  
  
Jack retraces their footprints in the dust. The broad, long-legged stride of Ianto's wingtips; the shorter-spaced, delicate steps of Toshiko's high heels. They begin in the front room, then up the stairs. Indentions of footsteps on the carpet, all the way up and circling through the ballroom, and then back down ... where they stop at only half the way. Jack closes his eyes and leans with his hand against the banister, conjuring the two of them in his mind's eye: Ianto with his head tilted, beckoning with an arm crooked; Tosh curling her small hand around Ianto's elbow.  
  
And from there, what? They have disappeared, but Jack knows that people don't simply _vanish_. There's always a reason: human intervention or supernatural, spatial or temporal. People are taken by the Rift and returned again, ghosts of themselves; people slip through rips and tears in time and are lost.  
  
"Tosh!" Jack calls, though he knows it's useless. "Ianto!"  
  
He should have been with them, he thinks guiltily, instead of begging off and sending Ianto instead. He'd thought despite the younger man's obvious misgivings that it would be good for Ianto to get more experience in the field. Just a routine assignment, then drop Tosh off at the train station, and back at the Hub for elevenses.  
  
Jack rings both their mobiles again, just in case, and gets the same response: Tosh bright and cheerful and Ianto evenly professional on voice mail greetings. He taps his earpiece, impatient. "Owen, anything?"  
  
" _Negative_ ," Owen comes back across the comms. " _Going down to check out the basement._ "  
  
"Keep me posted."  
  
Jack makes one more circuit around the ballroom, and stops to stare at the bandstand, as if the empty chairs have secrets they will tell him. He can imagine exactly what this place would be like in its heyday, full of music and so _alive_ , but now it's simply another memory layered in dust.  
  
"Ianto, Tosh," he breathes out on the current of a sigh. "Come on ... give me some kind of sign."  
  
\--  
  
"May I have this dance?"  
  
Ianto and Tosh look up simultaneously. The pilot standing there is not the same fresh-faced boy who had helped Tosh with the coordinates. This one is dark-haired and smartly dressed, and has his hand extended to Tosh, who has a dumbfounded expression on her face. Ianto gives her an encouraging nod. "Go ahead," he urges with a smile. "I'll be fine."  
  
Tosh is obviously reluctant, but a refusal would be more trouble than it's worth. Ianto waits until she and the pilot -- Ianto hears him introduce himself as George -- have disappeared into the crowd, then gets up and heads back in the direction of the office they had been in earlier. Ianto glances up and down the hallway before entering, and experiences a flood of relief as he finds the camera sitting on the desk. It's a model that he doesn't think should exist yet, with the ability to take photographs with instant film, but Ianto isn't going to question the good fortune. He and Tosh had talked it over and decided that a photograph would stand a much better chance than ink and paper.  
  
Ianto lines up the paper and carefully takes the picture, anxious and rushed with the fear of being caught. They need nothing to make themselves stand out. He knows from all his lessons in temporal paradox that if they become too entwined in events, it may well serve as the nail in the coffin for their chances of ever returning.  
  
He checks his watch again while waiting for the photo to develop: they have been here an hour. It may be enough time for Jack to start wondering, but Jack isn't prone to keeping tabs; the only thing he is likely to have noticed by now is that his coffee cup is empty. Ianto sighs, rubbing a hand over his face, and barely straightens in time to catch the door opening before the manager walks in.  
  
Startling like a guilty child, Ianto hides the photo behind his back and clears his throat, but the old man just looks amused. "We really must stop meeting like this," he states, walking around to the desk.  
  
Ianto turns uneasily. "I was just -- the camera -- it's a very fascinating device. I confess I wanted to get a closer look."  
  
"Ahh," the man states, sounding enlightened. He takes something -- a slip of paper, another picture? -- that he'd been carrying, and slips it in the pages of a book, jutting out past the edges. "I could take a photograph of you and your lady friend, if you'd like?"  
  
"No, that's all right." Ianto shakes his head, and gestures at the door. "I'll be going now. Sorry to bother you." He turns and tries not to look hurried as he slips out the door. He can still feel the old man's eyes on his back when he closes it again, and can't help but wonder what the apparent manager of this place must think of him, barging around. It's certainly against the rules of propriety for his own day and age, much less this one.  
  
Ianto blows out a sigh of relief and heads back out to try to find a hiding place for the photo. It needs to be somewhere that Jack, Gwen, and Owen will think to look, and somewhere that might withstand the future demolition of the dance hall, just in case. He's moving hurriedly down the hall when another of the pilots abruptly crosses his path.  
  
"Pardon me," the man says, putting out his hands to prevent a collision. The accent is American. "I don't suppose I make much of a pilot if I can't watch where I'm going."  
  
"No harm done," Ianto reassures briskly. He tucks the photo into his jacket pocket to hide it, and tries to step around.  
  
"I don't think we've met," the man is busy saying, inconveniently.  
  
"Um ... Daffydd Jones," Ianto lies, extending a hand. He figures the last name is safe -- how many Joneses are there in Wales? -- and the substituted first is common enough.  
  
The American accepts Ianto's hand and shakes it; solid, firm, but polite. "Captain Jack Harkness."  
  
Ianto stares hard, feeling as if the floor has tilted beneath his feet. He isn't so much surprised by the man himself -- he'd suspected that at some point in history, a man named Captain Jack Harkness must have existed before Jack assumed the title -- as the strange series of consequences that have brought them to meet. Morbidly, Ianto wonders when this man will have to die in order for Jack to become him.  
  
"Are you all right?" the captain asks. His tone implies that he's repeated the question for Ianto's benefit.  
  
"What? Oh, yes. Sorry." Ianto gathers himself back together and resolves to do what any sane person would do in his situation: refuse to think about it. He heads back toward the ballroom, hoping to get away, to keep with his vow of no interference.  
  
"I understand," Captain Harkness says, falling into step companionably alongside Ianto. "This war, it has all of us a little rattled. Come on, let me buy you a drink."  
  
Ianto has a gin and tonic, and is obligated to settle at a table with the man. In his mind, against his will, he's already begun compiling a compare-and-contrast list between Captain Jack Harkness in 1941, and the Captain Jack Harkness he left behind (or is it ahead?). He scans the crowd for Toshiko to distract himself, and finds her dancing again, this time with a different one of the uniformed men. She looks like she might actually be enjoying herself.  
  
Captain Harkness has noticed where Ianto's eyes wandered. "Excuse my men, they've had a little too much. Tonight's their last night of OTU. A lot of them are shipping out for the first time tomorrow."  
  
Ianto turns back, shaking his head. "As long as she's fine dancing with them, I don't mind."  
  
Captain Harkness -- Ianto can't think of him as _Jack_ \-- nods, and takes a long sip of his drink. "She's your girl?"  
  
"No," Ianto blurts. He chooses his next words more carefully. "We're friends, colleagues. Traveling together."  
  
The other man might be assessing Ianto's lack of uniform, or he might just be wondering at a Welsh civilian, traveling with a Japanese woman.  
  
"Code-breakers," Ianto explains, lowering his voice to suggest the hush-hush nature of the information he's imparting. A good lie can sound like the truth if imparted the right way. "I'm on a small holiday through here, then we're on our way to Bletchley."  
  
The captain leans forward in his chair, attention rapt. "Important work," he agrees, lifting his glass. "A toast."  
  
Ianto clinks his glass and drains the gin and tonic quickly, sadly amused at the fact that, for him, it still feels as if it's mid-morning and he's drinking alcohol instead of coffee. He's almost sobered by the thought when he sets his glass back down.  
  
Then, all around, the sirens go off. The reaction is instantaneous: the music stops like a needle lifted from a record, the crowd pauses mid-step, and the old manager is calling for everyone to head to shelter. Ianto jumps up and rushes to find Tosh as the realization finally hits home: they're in 1941, and Britain is at war.  
  
\--  
  
Jack makes his last stop in an office, the only room in the entire dance hall that looks as if it's still being used, though everything is terribly dated. There are things everywhere, the decor of someone settled in deeply. It is not the office of someone who anticipates evacuating in less than a week, and Jack can't help but find it a little suspicious. He scans the interior of the room, then crosses to the desk and sorts through its contents with little regard for privacy.  
  
The paperwork is of the usual flavor, bills and receipts and letters in relation to the demolition of the dance hall. Maybe this is a last protest, and in that, at least, Jack can sympathize. He flips through all the folders and moves to the back of the desk to look in the drawers. In the bottom of one, a book catches his eye, and he pulls it out to flip through the pages. A photograph flutters out onto the desk, edges yellowed with age.  
  
Jack picks it up and turns it over, and his heart leaps into his throat. The picture is of a young soldier and a woman, but in the background stand, unmistakably, Tosh and Ianto.  
  
" _Jack_ ," Owen's voice crackles over the comm.  
  
Jack almost startles, tapping his earpiece. "What have you got for me?"  
  
" _Found a tin down here in the basement with a picture in it of some calculations. Looks like Tosh's handwriting._ "  
  
"Great, meet me upstairs." Jack feels some of the tension unwinding at finally having a clue, real confirmation that Tosh and Ianto were really taken back in time; and the fact that they -- his precious, clever team -- might have provided the key to getting themselves home. He draws a breath and lets it out, and turns to leave.  
  
The caretaker stands right in the center of the doorway, a placid smile on his face. "Hello, my name is Bilis Manger. May I help you?"  
  



	4. Good Morning, Heartache

Jack takes Ianto down into the Hub on the invisible lift, rather than using the usual tourist information centre facade. Ianto suspects that this is something the captain does on every new recruit's first day, alternately to impress and to intimidate, but after having worked in the glass tower that was Torchwood London, Ianto is less than awestruck by the flash.  
  
"Welcome to the Hub," Jack announces, gesturing around at the sprawling underground base as he steps from the lift.  
  
Ianto straightens his suit jacket as he follows, every bit the attentive new employee.  
  
"Ianto Jones, meet Suzie Costello, second in command." Jack nods toward a woman whose corner station is cluttered with bits of alien technology, more than a few of which look more like weapons than anything else. Her dark eyes, curly black hair, and hawkish nose lend her looks a little bit of the severe, but her expression softens when she smiles and waves over at Ianto.  
  
"Welcome to the madhouse," she greets.  
  
Ianto returns the wave, and Jack moves on to the next introduction. "Toshiko Sato, computer genius," is a pretty Asian woman perched on a stool, glasses sliding down her nose while she pores over her computer screen.  
  
She looks up, and smiles shyly. "Call me Tosh, everyone does."  
  
Jack starts walking again, and stops at a railing overlooking what would look like a white-tiled, old fashioned operating theatre if not for the clearly alien corpse laid open on the table. "Owen, meet Ianto Jones. Ianto, Dr. Owen Harper, our chief medic."  
  
" _Only_ medic," the doctor corrects curtly, without looking up.  
  
Jack shrugs, and keeps walking. A squawk sounds overhead, and the pterodactyl flaps past on a gusty current. "And of course, you know Myfanwy."  
  
Ianto raises his eyebrows. "You named her Myfanwy."  
  
"Yep. I haven't decided if that makes you or me Hywel." Jack pauses, looking considerate. "Not sure I _wanna_ know the answer to that." He puts a casual hand at the small of Ianto's back and steers him in a different direction. Everything about Jack, from conversation to touch, seems casual, and Ianto hasn't decided if it comes naturally to the man or is simply the result of a great deal of practice.  
  
Together, they circle back around to an area stocked with a mini-fridge, electric kettle, and a complex looking espresso machine. Here, Jack's expression turns from cheeky to vaguely chagrined. "I requisitioned this six months ago because they all kept whining about wanting a coffee maker," he explains. "And now none of them can figure out how to use it."  
  
"And the captain mustn't be expected to make his own coffee," Ianto replies, with just the right amount of politeness to keep the sarcasm from biting into Jack's massive ego. He steps up to the machine, and absently places a hand on one of the levers as he looks back over his shoulder at Jack, his question coy. "How do you take yours, sir?"  
  
Jack is standing with a distant, faraway look in his eyes, but when his gaze snaps back to Ianto, it's completely lascivious. "Strong and hot," he replies, and the rest becomes history.  
  
\--  
  
"Ianto Jones. Born nineteenth August, 1983, currently aged twenty-four; nationality, Welsh. Currently posted as general support officer for Torchwood division three, Cardiff."  
  
Tilda Brennan reads her notes as if ticking off a list, voice bored with apparent disinterest. Only moments ago she had done the same with Tosh's information, and now stares up at them silently, trying to be intimidating. Ianto has learned to read people well enough to know that she is thrown off-balance, frightened by the information, and who wouldn't be? Even as a leader, she is out of her element. Jack would know what to do, but Jack isn't here: they made sure of that. Ianto and Tosh had waited outside the Hub's facade, freezing and feeling ridiculous, until the tails of the captain's greatcoat had vanished into a black Daimler, along with a statuesque redhead.  
  
They'd only just managed to get past a uniformed man Ianto heard described only as Rhydian, who had glared significantly behind his glasses before leading them down to Tilda. Now, Ianto stands with Tosh in the office that will be Jack's someday, like a naughty schoolboy awaiting punishment. The room looks nothing like it will, but the contrasts are not enough to keep it from feeling somehow like _home_ , making Ianto long for the same office, in a different time, all the more.  
  
The woman behind the desk, the cool and no nonsense leader of Torchwood in this era, couldn't be any more different than Jack, either. Something about her manner reminds Ianto strongly of Yvonne Hartman, whose regime perhaps had not been so greatly out of place.  
  
"And I am to believe you have," she states slowly but crisply, "through some accident of the Rift, slipped in time from sixty-seven years in the future to the present."  
  
"Ms. Brennan --" Ianto begins.  
  
"That is doctor to you, young man."  
  
Ianto sets his jaw and summons up all the diplomacy he first learned at Torchwood London and has since perfected in his time in Cardiff. "Dr. Brennan, this is very important. Whether or not you choose to believe that we're from the future, we _can't_ be allowed to interact with Captain Harkness."  
  
"Jack?" The young man posted beside the door asks. "What does he have to do with all this?"  
  
Both Ianto and Tosh turn; they had completely forgotten, until the man spoke, that he was even there. He had been only briefly and curtly introduced to them as Greg Bishop. Dark-haired and blue-eyed, dapper in a suit and tie, quietly supporting the leader; Ianto can't help but feel as if he's looking at a direct predecessor.  
  
"Undoubtedly," Tilda notes, her expression pinched as if she finds the very mention of Jack a sour taste in her mouth, "the captain's standing reputation of freelance work for the Institute will continue long into the future."  
  
Ianto is silent for a moment, and Tosh steps forward, speaking up. "Dr. Brennan, I think we were the victims of a temporal shift. It had been occurring in phases at the dance hall, people hearing old music, seeing ghosts. Of course, we know they weren't really ghosts. I believe there's a strong possibility that another shift will occur that will allow us to get back to our own time, but until then ..."  
  
Tilda sits back in her chair and purses her lips, looking back and forth between the two. "Very well. You are still Torchwood officers, and as such, until you may be returned to your assigned posts, you will be given assignments to make use of your skills and abilities to the best advantage of the Institute as a whole. To avoid any matters of temporal conflict, new identities will be --"  
  
"Let me tell you," Jack's voice rings out, suddenly, across the Hub proper. "It's been _years_ since I've seen a Hoix and they don't get _any_ less charming."  
  
Ianto's heart leaps into his throat and he glances over his shoulder, frantic; they had been so absorbed in discussion that they missed the sound of the cog door rolling back. Greg is the one to spring into action, one hand at the small of Tosh's back and the other on Ianto's elbow, leading them to the narrow staircase into the interrogation room below. He whispers a quick "Stay here," then trots back up the steps, reaching the top just as Ianto hears Jack enter the office. He presses himself back against the wall and pulls Tosh with him, both of them hardly daring breathe.  
  
"Those things really _will_ eat anything," Jack says, followed by a rustle of paper. "Fortunately, Llinos and I got it, with only minor damages."  
  
"What is this, Harkness?" Tilda asks archly. Not surprisingly, she sounds even less amused at Jack's boisterous attitude.  
  
"Requisition request for a new rear tire for the car."  
  
"And _why_ , pray tell, do you need replacement parts for a vehicle requisitioned a few _weeks_ ago?"  
  
Jack's sigh sounds long suffering. "I told you, Tilda --"  
  
" _Dr. Brennan_."  
  
"-- that was a Hoix. They will eat anything. Up to and including the tires of Daimlers."  
  
Ianto closes his eyes and leans back against the wall. The sound of Jack's voice, more than six decades before Jack will even meet him, sends the blood rushing to Ianto's head. He very suddenly, painfully, misses home, misses _Jack_. He edges closer to Tosh and looks down to check on her. She smiles up at him, and reaches to take his hand in her own smaller one. Ianto summons a smile back and gives her hand a squeeze.  
  
 _We'll get through this_ , he mouths, and Tosh nods, looking only a little teary-eyed as she does.  
  
"-- take care of this," Tilda is saying now.  
  
"Greg _always_ takes good care of me, don't you Greg?" Ianto can almost hear the grin in Jack's voice.  
  
"I do try, Jack." There is good-natured affection in the younger man's response.  
  
Silence follows, then a murmur Ianto strains his ears to hear but can't quite make out.  
  
"Why don't the two of you take your sweet nothings elsewhere?" Tilda again, and more annoyed this time.  
  
"Yes, ma'am. Greg, coffee?"  
  
Ianto scowls despite himself. He closes his eyes again, unable to place or explain the sudden pang of jealousy twisting in his gut.  
  
"In a moment, Jack. I have something I need to finish up."  
  
Receding footsteps signal Jack's departure, and a few seconds later Greg comes down to the interrogation room. "Sorry," he apologizes. "If you'll just come with me, I'll show you to someplace more comfortable."  
  
Greg leads them back through the Hub, which is a strange blend of familiar and unrecognizable all at once; Jack does not appear again. They finally reach a corridor one level down, the sub rooms which Ianto knows will be converted in 1965 to extra storage space. Now, however, Greg opens the door to one to reveal a sparsely furnished, roughly inhabitable space, longer than it is wide. There are simple camp beds with plain white sheets and gray blankets lining the walls, and a door at the opposite end that is opened into a small cubicle of a bathroom, mostly filled by a shower.  
  
"With the bombing, sometimes it's necessary for us to sleep here," Greg explains. "It's not much, but it will be a place until we can move you over to something better."  
  
Tosh sits down on the edge of one of the beds, and Ianto joins her; together, they barely indent the hard mattress. It reminds Ianto more than a little of the narrow bed in Jack's quarters, and he wonders idly what that under-the-floor space is used for now, when Jack obviously doesn't live there.  
  
Greg pauses for a moment, seeming slightly hesitant for the first time. "I'm afraid that I will have to confiscate your personal possessions ... for anachronistic reasons, of course," he states apologetically. "Including your clothes. Mr. Jones, we're of a similar height and build; I have a spare suit here that I'm sure you can wear until you can find something more suited to your liking. Miss Sato --"  
  
"Toshiko, please."  
  
"Miss Toshiko," Greg says with a smile. "My colleague Llinos should have something that will do until similar arrangements can be made for you as well. If you'll both excuse me a moment? I'm sure I don't need to tell you that it's best if you remain here until I return."  
  
Ianto sits in silence with Tosh for a long few minutes after Greg has left the room; at some point, they have clasped hands again without Ianto being conscious of it. The tactile sensation is some comfort, at least, in a situation that's leaving him feeling more and more despondent.  
  
"So." Tosh breathes out the word like a sigh. "Haven't changed much in sixty years, have we?"  
  
"Jack has," Ianto replies quietly.  
  
Tosh nods, leans her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes. "The pilot, at the Ritz. What do you think that was about?"  
  
"I think Jack has his name." Ianto frowns, staring up at the bare light bulb that swings from the ceiling. "There's so much we don't know about him."  
  
"I know one thing." Tosh squeezes Ianto's hand, almost painfully. "Jack _loves_ us, and I'm sure he's looking for us. They've probably even now found those calculations."  
  
Ianto summons up a smile, appreciative of Tosh's attempt at cheering him up, if nothing else. "You're right." He pauses, brows furrowed in thought. "Your scanner. When he takes our things --"  
  
"Don't let him have it," she finishes firmly. "I hadn't planned on it. The technology is too advanced. I know for a fact that we won't find half the components I used until 1989, and the rest was contemporary material."  
  
Ianto nods, and lapses into silence to lean back against the wall. It hasn't even been twenty-four hours yet, according to his watch, and yet he feels bone weary. He had slept very little the night before, and then only fitfully, his mind too far lost on what would happen to them next. When they rose early that morning to seek out Torchwood, Ianto had felt as if he would have best not slept at all.  
  
Greg knocks on the door this time before entering again. He hands Ianto a suit on a hanger, and a neatly folded shirt. "I thought your shoes would be fine," he notes. "Miss Toshiko, I think this might be a little large for you, you're such a petite figure."  
  
Tosh blushes as she takes the dress from him. "It will be fine, thank you."  
  
Greg places two boxes down on one of the other bunks. They're the heavy Torchwood regulation boxes of the era, complete with leather straps and brass buckles, name plates on the front ready to hold cards describing their contents. Ianto strains to remember if he has ever seen two such boxes in the archive, but the basements and sub-levels of the Hub are so extensive that even he has not yet managed to sort through all of them.  
  
"If you would just gather up your things and place them in these boxes when you're finished," Greg instructs, and turns to Ianto. "There is another room down the hall where you can change."  
  
Ianto glances at Tosh in question, but she gives him a little nod, and he follows Greg from the room to a smaller one two doors back up the corridor. This looks more like a conventional locker room, dimly lit with open showers and benches. Ianto steps inside, and Greg leaves, closing the door behind himself.  
  
Shrugging off his suit jacket and beginning to unbutton his waistcoat, Ianto finds himself almost nervous to strip off the armor of his suit, as if handing away the final proof of his existence in another century. He carefully folds the pieces and stacks them on one of the benches, pulls free his tie and begins to unbutton his shirt. He toes out of his shoes before he removes his belt, and steps out of his trousers.  
  
The new trousers are of a good length but not especially well-tailored; Ianto can't help but think his father -- who, while dead, technically hasn't even been born yet -- would be deeply critical of the way the cuffs bunch at the tops of his feet. He puts on the shirt, a crisp white, double-cuffed Oxford. There is no tie, but a pair of cufflinks jingle in the pocket of the jacket when Ianto shrugs it on. The jacket is a little wide in the shoulders and a bit longer than he would like, but the fit is adequate for the time period, and the pinstriped navy wool is fine quality.  
  
Ianto is fastening the simple goldtone cufflinks when the door eases open. He keeps his back turned, figuring it's only Greg, and steps back into his shoes. "I'll only --" _be another moment_ , he begins to say, when a pair of strong -- and familiar -- arms wind around his waist.  
  
"Thought I saw you come down here," Jack murmurs, lowering his chin onto Ianto's shoulder. "I've been waiting for you."  
  
Ianto freezes, hardly daring to breathe in his panic. He keeps his head turned carefully to the side as Jack's lips descend on his neck, feathering kisses. It would be so tempting right now, he thinks, to simply sink into that embrace and pretend that everything since yesterday has been nothing more than a nightmare. It feels so much like the goodbye they'd shared in Jack's office, before --  
  
"Greg ..."  
  
But Jack isn't kissing _him_. The reminder of it is enough to provoke Ianto forward, but before he can step free, Jack's arms tighten and he leans more of his weight forward.  
  
"Sometimes," Jack is murmuring, "you're the only thing that keeps me here."  
  
Ianto closes his eyes and hesitantly reaches down to cover Jack's hands, locked at his waist, with his own. Jack's chest, pressed to Ianto's back, feels the same, and Ianto knows if he turned around to see, Jack would look the same, too. But it isn't the same man, not really, Ianto tells himself, trying desperately to remember it. The tender words are not meant for Ianto, they're meant for Greg. Ianto should step away, tell Jack that he has made a mistake.  
  
He's saved the trouble by the quick opening of the door, and a woman's voice; this must be the mysterious Llinos, the only member of the team they have not yet met. "Jack," she calls, "Dr. Brennan needs you upstairs."  
  
Jack groans when he pulls away, pressing a last errant kiss to Ianto's jaw. "I'll be back for you later," he whispers, and turns to sweep out the door.  
  
Ianto doesn't move, paralyzed by shock and the unaccustomed ache in his chest. He hasn't felt this way since Canary Wharf, he thinks, such a profound sense of loss since Lisa. It takes several minutes before he can look back at the door, and when he finally returns to Tosh, she doesn't ask what's wrong, assuming it has to do with their circumstances. She's right and wrong, all at once: circumstance has everything and nothing to do with it.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Myfanwy and Hywel are from [the myth of Myfanwy](http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/northeast/guides/weird/mythsandlegends/pages/myfanwy.shtml), though I have no idea if this reference was behind the name. Characters in 1941 Torchwood are from the book _The Twilight Streets_ by Gary Russell. I don't think I've spoiled the book much, if at all with this, as they're all introduced in the first few pages, and I'm just borrowing them from their pre-canon, though I recommend reading the book anyway (even if some of its content was Jossed by S3).


	5. I've Heard That Song Before

_Ongoing Archive Notes  
Torchwood 3  
Volume 72, Week 46_  
  
Jack has been staring at the cursor longer than he would like to admit. Not only is it difficult to know where to begin composing his notes on the life and deaths of Suzie Costello, but he continues to find himself drawn back to his conversation with Ianto, still open in a smaller window ( _Lisa is dead, sir_ ). Jack glances at his watch, and is considering how much time he has left, when Ianto slips into the office. Ianto moves silently enough that only the disturbance in the air alerts Jack to his entry, but as he draws closer, the _tick-tick-tick_ of the stopwatch is more readily apparent. After a pause to let his presence be known, Ianto depresses the button on the top.  
  
"Eighteen seconds to spare." Ianto deliberately closes the door behind him and walks over to sit on the edge of the desk. His posture relaxes, and in a matter of moments he has made the subtle transition from subordinate to lover that has become more and more common these days.  
  
Jack closes both windows with a few half-hearted keystrokes, and leans back in his chair to look up at the other man. Ianto Jones, lover and unexpected confidante, is the only member of the team to view the job from a perspective of really knowing what he was getting into. From day one, Ianto has been different from the others: none of Tosh's gratitude, Owen's resentment, or Gwen's awe at being let into a secret world. Jack knows well enough, now, that Ianto had used him -- all of them -- in desperation, a means of trying to save his dying girlfriend, but the captain has long since forgiven that misplaced loyalty.  
  
"I don't think I could have forgiven her this time," Jack says after a moment, sitting up.  
  
Ianto places the stopwatch down on the desk blotter, and folds his hands in his lap, looking thoughtful. "Suzie didn't want your forgiveness," he replies gently. "She made her own second chance."  
  
Jack nods, reaching to rest a hand on Ianto's knee; the scratch of wool itches against his palm. "This is the only time I've ever lost someone twice."  
  
"You must have lost a lot of people after a hundred years of this." There's something cautionary about Ianto's tone, but he doesn't seem to doubt that his words are true.  
  
Jack tries not to look as startled as he is. "What do you mean?" he asks carefully.  
  
Ianto covers Jack's hand with his own, twining their fingers together when Jack turns his over for their palms to meet. "I've seen the archives. You did a good job, but you didn't get rid of everything."  
  
Jack falls silent for a moment, making a study of Ianto's face. There's nothing smug in his expression, no tell in clear grey-blue eyes that might signal a bluff. But there is determination, confidence in the truth, and maybe a hint of challenge, as if Ianto demands to know whether Jack will try to maintain his lie. "How long have you known?" he finally asks.  
  
"The night you hired Gwen." Ianto turns thoughtful, as if remembering. "I had a few ideas before then, but I hadn't quite worked it out until I saw the footage from the Plass."  
  
Clever Ianto, Jack can't help but think. The only one who would get to something like that before Jack could cover his own tracks, and then proceed to say nothing about it until the time was right. He spends another moment in simply considering Ianto, and thinks about asking the questions that might be important to a lover in this century in regards to immortality. Jack can't spend his life with someone, it simply isn't an option; and yet, he finds himself reluctant to be so fatalistic -- if honest -- with Ianto at the moment.  
  
Ianto doesn't press the matter beyond that, doesn't offer Jack comfort by saying it doesn't bother him; he simply doesn't address it at all.  
  
"She was the first one I hired," Jack says, changing the subject back to Suzie. "My second in command. I never thought she was capable of doing something like that." He shakes his head. "I never saw it coming."  
  
"I hardly think it was your fault." Ianto squeezes Jack's hand, something careful in the gesture. "You couldn't have known."  
  
Jack nods, though he still has his reservations about it, and looks down at their joined hands. He still hasn't quite worked out just what he did to earn comfort from someone who has all the right in the world to hate him. Jack won't claim to have been wrong about Lisa, but he will admit to having handled the situation badly. And yet, Ianto has the capacity for forgiveness, or so Jack likes to think; he's too afraid to ask and have that tentative absolution denied.  
  
Ianto reaches for the stopwatch, turning it idly in his free hand. "Stop thinking so hard."  
  
It's usually easy to flip the switch from morose to cheerful, to drown his sorrows in other, more pleasurable pursuits, but tonight Jack finds it difficult to summon a smile in response to Ianto's gentle urging. He has to work for a convincing response, to raise his eyebrows and make a suggestive remark. "I might need a little help with that."  
  
"I'm sure I can get your mind off it for a while." Ianto leans closer, almost close enough to kiss. Jack hears the click of the button on the top, and Ianto's voice, a low, rumbling promise over the rhythmic ticking. "Let's see for how long."  
  
Jack closes his eyes, and kisses Ianto, and lets it all go, if only for a little while.  
  
\--  
  
 _Ongoing Archive Notes  
Torchwood 3  
Volume 72, Week 50_  
  
Jack opens his eyes to the same blinking cursor he had exhaustedly stared at until drifting off. He still has no idea where to begin with this, his mind a million miles and over sixty years away. Here only a few weeks later, he isn't ready to write a report on the loss of not one, but two more members of his team. It feels like a section of his heart cut away. He has had more than his fair share of this, attended enough funerals. Jack Harkness is intimate with loss, but it doesn't mean he has to accept it. If anything, this teaches him he has learned to accept nothing.  
  
Three days have passed since Tosh and Ianto went to the Ritz. Here on the morning of the fourth, Jack walks out of his office to find the Hub nearly deserted. Gwen sits at her workstation, surrounded by her casework: papers pinned up, folders stacked in a hastily organized mess. Gwen can probably find everything easily in the confusing jumble, but Ianto would have a fit if he were here, Jack thinks, with a pang of loss. The remaining members of the team have been subsisting on take-out, and the desks and tables are littered with Chinese cartons and pizza boxes.  
  
"Where's Owen?" Jack finally asks, after a moment spent unnoticed by Gwen.  
  
She turns with a start, and Jack can't figure out if the look on her face is guilty, or just surprised. "He rang in while you were asleep --"  
  
"I wasn't asleep."  
  
"-- to say he was going to drop by the Ritz on his way in to have another look around."  
  
Jack hasn't decided, yet, whether Owen's startling dedication to finding a solution to their problem is just touching concern for his missing teammates, or if he is still dwelling on Diane and her flight into a Rift storm. They've already had one argument over whether opening the Rift is a viable option -- and whatever the case, it is not. The calculations on the photograph were incomplete, and not because Tosh hadn't written them down. Whether purposely or accidentally, the photograph's lower right hand corner is torn, removing the last digits they would need in order to activate the Rift manipulator safely. Even then, they don't know it would be safe; they haven't tested it, and use is strictly forbidden for any number of reasons.  
  
"Do you have anything new?" he asks, choosing not to voice his concerns to Gwen. Jack has had enough of doleful eyes and sympathetic arm-pats to hold him a lifetime already. He deeply values Gwen and her humanity, but with tensions running high in the Hub, Jack continues to find himself restraining the urge to lash out in frustration.  
  
"I've found some archive records that look promising," Gwen replies. "Stands to reason Ianto and Tosh might've gone to Torchwood in the forties, doesn't it? And if Ianto were going to leave us a clue, it would probably be there. Maybe the original copy of the calculations."  
  
Jack nods, and while doubtful, he's also reluctant to point out that he had been in Torchwood in 1941, and he would remember seeing them, wouldn't he? But he trusts them to have been clever enough to avoid crossing his timeline, especially with Ianto -- and probably Tosh, as well -- knowing better.  
  
"I have two numbers," Gwen continues, after the silence goes on just long enough to become awkward, and for her to realize Jack doesn't plan to respond. "They seem to coordinate with files down in the archive. I'll just --"  
  
"I'll go," he interrupts.  
  
She hesitates, turning a look that might be worried on him. "Do you want me to come with?"  
  
"No." Jack jots down the numbers and their locations on his palm and, feeling a momentary pang of guilt, he explains gently, "I know my way around there better, it won't take me as long. Keep looking. I'll be back soon."  
  
Gwen goes back to her work, and Jack descends to the archives, his heart and mind heavy. He winds his way past the cells where Janet is quietly yowling -- it occurs to Jack that Ianto hasn't been here to feed the Weevil -- and down into the deeper bowels of the Hub. The archives are in better shape than they have been in years, broken light bulbs replaced and the climate settings repaired and carefully regulated for the preservation of the archival material.  
  
If Ianto hadn't joined Torchwood, Jack thinks, he might have enjoyed a successful career as a museum curator. The corridors of the archives are quiet enough to be a museum, at any rate, Jack's footsteps echoing off the concrete floor as he moves past more recent material to the 1940-1942 section. It's been years since he's been in this particular area, since Tilda Brennan was director and a position very similar to Ianto's was held by another. Jack draws in a breath and exhales it in a sigh, his mind lingering on Greg Bishop as he runs his fingers through the dust on the boxes. It's likely none of them have been touched since Greg was alive.  
  
Jack finds his hope quietly warring: to find something that will help, or nothing at all if it won't. He locates the two numbers that Gwen had given him: not files, but boxes, strapped and buckled and neatly labeled. The paper has yellowed and the ink faded to brown, but Greg's meticulous penmanship is unmistakable. Jack considers going through the boxes on his own down here, but ultimately removes them from the shelves and carries them back up.  
  
In the Hub proper, Owen is pacing up and down behind Gwen's station, saying something that Jack only catches the end of. "-- hope there's something in those files, because aside from those two pictures we've got no bloody clue."  
  
Jack glowers at Owen, quickly silencing the doctor, and sets the boxes down on the desk. "No files," he states. "Just these."  
  
Gwen takes the one off the top. "Heavy," she comments, pulling it onto her lap. She carefully unfastens the buckles and opens it, reminiscent of someone trying not to tear wrapping paper. The lid comes off with a reluctant sucking sound, after almost seven decades left to settle into place. Brittle, yellowed tissue paper covers the contents, breaking off in Gwen's fingers when she pulls it aside.  
  
"Oh," she breathes out, running her hand over the plum-colored material of Tosh's dress, the beads and sequins on the trim still catching the light.  
  
Jack opens the other box, his heart sinking as he finds Ianto's dark suit inside. He can put the pieces together well enough: Torchwood would have taken anything anachronistic, assigned new identities, and integrated them into the society of the time. Jack carefully removes the suit from the box and sets it aside, finding Ianto's neatly-folded shirt and rolled up tie, and an assortment of loose items in a smaller containment box: wallet, mobile phone, headset.  
  
Gwen, taking Jack's lead, puts Tosh's dress to the side to check the bottom of the box. The weight is quickly explained by the presence of a computer case that takes up most of the space, along with a similar smaller box that holds her jewelry and phone.  
  
"That's Tosh's laptop," Owen points out. "Didn't she have the coordinates on there?"  
  
Jack shakes his head, drawing his attention away from the wool between his fingers. "That laptop's been sitting in storage for sixty years. Even if the components haven't totally degraded, we'd be lucky to salvage anything from the hard drive."  
  
Owen doesn't back down, taking the case out of the box. "We have to at least try. What happens when demolition day rolls around, huh? The Ritz will be rubble and Tosh and Ianto might be stuck."  
  
"There's a lot more at stake here than just Tosh and Ianto," Jack snaps out. "And I'm not talking about Diane."  
  
Owen's eyes narrow. "Don't."  
  
"Why not, Owen?" Jack pushes. "Admit it. You don't care about Tosh, you sure as hell don't care what happens to Ianto. I hate to break it to you, but even if we open the Rift, Diane's not going to come flying back to you."  
  
"What right do you --"  
  
"I have every right, when it threatens the safety of the entire planet." Jack steps back, folding his arms across his chest, his jaw set. "We're not opening the Rift. Even if you had all the coordinates," he grits out, "it still wouldn't work."  
  
"Why the bloody hell not?"  
  
"Because." Jack draws a deep breath and exhales it slowly, looking at the Rift manipulator. "There's a piece missing."  
  
"What do you mean, there's a piece missing?" Owen frowns, turning defensive. "How do you know?"  
  
Jack doesn't want to admit that he had looked long and hard at the Rift manipulator, thinking of the possibilities of opening the Rift with the incomplete coordinates, the very thing Owen is arguing for right now. He'd won the argument with himself by only a slim margin, the idea mercifully supported by the missing piece.  
  
"I checked it against the blueprints. It won't work without it."  
  
"Shit!" Owen kicks the chair at Tosh's station, sending it wheeling off to bounce down the stairs. "Where is it? Why would it be missing?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
They both go silent, and Jack realizes Gwen is looking at them balefully. "If you two are quite done arguing," she states in a measured tone, "you might want to look at this."  
  
Jack leans over her shoulder to look at the screen, where half a dozen more photos are displayed of that night at the Ritz: including one of Tosh and Ianto, with Bilis Manger in the background.  
  
"But I just saw him there," Jack protests.  
  
"Well, somehow he's in 1941 and he's here," Gwen notes. "I'd say that's worth looking into."  
  
Jack nods, grabbing his coat. "I'm going to go have a chat with our _caretaker_ friend."  
  
Before Owen and Gwen can protest, Jack is halfway to the SUV, his mind reeling. How could he have been so stupid? he wonders. He'd written Bilis Manger off as an innocent bystander, someone who just happened to be there when the Rift made its temporal shift and took Tosh and Ianto. The man had certainly said nothing to indicate any knowledge or involvement, even -- especially -- when Jack had shown him the photo from the drawer and inquired further about the two people in it.  
  
Those who live in glass houses can't throw stones, and Jack can hardly question a man's ability to be in two places, almost seven decades apart, still looking the same. But he knows something is suspicious about Bilis Manger, and he intends to find out what it is.  
  



	6. I'll Walk Alone

"May 8, 1945." Toshiko carefully circles the date in blue ink with the fountain pen, and looks back over the rudimentary timeline she and Ianto have compiled. It's missing a lot of dates, important ones to be certain, and inevitably they will have to either hide or destroy it, but for now it serves as a comfort simply to have an idea of the things they have to look forward to ... or to dread. "V-E Day."  
  
"Hopefully we won't still be here to see it." Ianto shifts behind her, hesitantly clearing his throat. "Ah ... you can turn around now."  
  
Tosh does, and immediately stops in the midst of capping the pen. A breath hitches involuntarily in her chest, and she releases it in a soft sigh. Ianto is nearly unrecognizable in the uniform of olive drab, though its creases and seams certainly hug him as finely as any of his suits. His hair is combed down neatly in style appropriate to the period, sideburns trimmed short and his five o'clock shadow shaved away. He stands nearly at attention for her inspection, the uniform's cap tucked beneath one arm. He looks nervous, and Tosh can't decide if it's due to the attire, or the entire situation.  
  
Truth be told, she is terribly worried about the idea of Ianto going to war, even if for as short a time as has been proposed. The special consultant Dr. Brennan brought in assured her earlier this same day that Ianto will not encounter actual combat, or be in any more danger than a normal day at Torchwood would present back in their own time, but she hardly trusts the word of strangers against her own gut instinct. Ianto just reminds her, all of a sudden, of Tommy Brockless, the private from the first World War, who is even now frozen in the morgue, intended for some purpose he doesn't know of, and may not even understand.  
  
Tosh realizes she has been silent in her perusal when Ianto shifts his weight self-consciously from one foot to the other. The motion draws her from her reverie, and she puts on her best smile, the brightest one that can still be appropriate for this moment. "You look dashing," she says, and imagines the words imbued with some distinctly wobbling quality she would rather them not.  
  
Silence hangs between them again, and Tosh lets her eyes fall back to her lap. In a bag on the bed beside her, she has a few essentials and the full ration book Greg gave her, and at the bottom, carefully wrapped in a blanket, her scanner. They have only a little while before Ianto leaves and she is to be relocated within Cardiff. Tosh hates to think of the isolation awaiting her once Ianto is gone. Officially, her false identity will be on record as a translator and decoder; it's a role she can comfortably fill. At the same time, though, she wonders why they didn't bother with sending her so far away, as they are doing to Ianto. At the very least, they might have allowed them to go together, she thinks; she desires to be a prisoner alone in this time any more than she had wanted to bear her days in that UNIT prison.  
  
The bed dips as Ianto sits down beside her, and Tosh looks up to the uncertain smile on Ianto's face.  
  
"I'll write, so you'll know I'm okay," he says, covering one of her hands with his. His fingers are soft and slender, unmarked but for a shiny burn on the pad of one from an encounter with the espresso machine just last week. She can't imagine the same hands grimy with dirt or blood, though she knows well what Ianto is capable of.  
  
Tosh swipes the back of her other hand across her eyes. She will not cry, she tells herself; she will stay strong for Ianto, who has carried much of this burden on his own so far. "Me, too."  
  
"I might even be back before the first one gets to you." Ianto squeezes her hand, and his voice is unbearably light. "Keep an eye out on the Rift. If something happens --"  
  
"Don't be silly," Tosh sniffs, clutching his fingers with a sudden fierceness. "Nothing's going to happen."  
  
Ianto opens his mouth, as if he stubbornly wants to say more; but to her relief, he doesn't. Untold minutes pass as they sit, Ianto's thumb stroking absently over Tosh's knuckles. She wonders if he's even aware he's donig it, if he's ever truly conscious of all the things he does to take care of other people. Ianto usually takes the subtle supporting role in Torchwood, though Tosh trusts Jack enough to know the captain couldn't have hired Ianto just to make the coffee and retrieve the dry-cleaning. Ianto is more than that, and Tosh wishes that she had told him more often how she appreciates getting coffee before she knows she's thirsty, or carry-out ordered before anyone realized it was time for lunch. She has seen Ianto assist Owen in carrying alien corpses, observed as he located files for Gwen, watched him help Jack into his greatcoat, and had him help load equipment into the SUV for her.  
  
Except for rare occasion, Ianto is always the one who remains behind, steady and watchful, tending the Hub, making their lives easier for when they return, and without a word of thanks required. Tosh feels unspeakably guilty over the fact that he's going into the fray now, and even guiltier for how traitorous her feelings truly are to Ianto's character. She hasn't forgotten -- will never forget -- how he threw himself at cannibals to give her time to escape, or how she felt that he was the only one prepared to offer her true sympathy over Mary. She wishes now that she knew how to thank him, how to help or comfort or soothe him, other than demanding silence over his brooding thoughts.  
  
"I should go," Ianto says gradually, rising from the bed.  
  
Tosh stands up and grabs him into a hug. She's shorter than he, but he stoops to wrap his arms around her after only the barest hesitation.  
  
"Be careful," she whispers.  
  
"I will. You, too."  
  
"I will," Tosh promises, and she reluctantly pulls away. She carefully smooths down the lapels of his uniform jacket, then steps back entirely, not trusting herself to say anything more.  
  
"I'll see you soon," he says, sounding more confident and resolute than he looks. Ianto then gathers up the rest of his own possessions, and with a last faint smile and murmured goodbye, he lets himself out of the room.  
  
Tosh blinks back a fresh welling of tears and sits back on the bed, silently wishing them both good luck and fair fortune, and a safe journey home, however it may come.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Jack weaves mindlessly through traffic on his way to the dance hall, taking full advantage of the SUV's flashing blue light bars and Torchwood's ability to manipulate the traffic signals. The drive is an innocuous one; Ianto, with his intricate knowledge of Cardiff - the satnav hadn't even been programmed by him the other day - would have never suspected a date with destiny lay at the end of a short trip to Sage Street. And Toshiko would have been too excited about seeing her family again after five years of exile imposed upon her by Jack. He'd carefully worded an e-mail to Tosh's younger brother a day and a half ago, apologizing for work having gotten in the way. The last the Sato family knew of Toshiko, she was working for the government, so it probably hadn't seemed much of a stretch.  
  
Still, Jack feels accountably guilty, both for her and the fact that Ianto seems to have no next of kin to make excuses to. Jack knows from Ianto's personnel file that his parents are dead and, while paper trails lead to a sister, Jack cannot find any contact information for her, leaving him to draw the conclusion that they must be estranged. How lonely and how Torchwood; Jack hates the easy out of an employee no one will miss just as much as he dreads having to make up stories and give condolences.  
  
He tightens his grip on the steering wheel and tries to put away his maudlin thoughts. It's much more productive to think about this with the rational what if, rather than the dire. They know that Ianto and Tosh sought the help of Torchwood. The two of them would have figured out to avoid Jack himself in that time period. 1941 -- Tilda was in charge, and Jack had been keeping himself occupied with Torchwood, trying to resist the impulse to run after the Doctor in London. It wasn't as if he hadn't had plenty of distraction. Jack can still remember Greg's pretty eyes and easy smiles, and oh, those cheekbones. Jack had been a different man then, eager to exist in a period he'd always romanticized, to have a little excitement to shake things up while he traveled the slow path.  
  
It was horrible and beautiful, and the real disillusionment of Jack Harkness. Nothing could compare, not being abandoned on the Game Station and having his heart broken for the first time, or even the horror of World War I. Everyone knew the Great War was terrible, even in Earth history lessons learned in the fifty-first century. It was the first conflict where humans had been able to utilize new technology for the destruction of their fellow man. Torchwood had used Jack more to their purposes then, but in World War II, Jack had truly entered the fray. He'd fought and died, and loved and lost just as hard. Greg and Llinos and Estelle, and countless nameless faces and hands had soothed and healed and gotten him by.  
  
Jack can't imagine leaving Tosh and Ianto to the war that finally broke him, that turned his century on Earth from a romantic waiting period into the harsh reality of the long con that now composes his life. He doesn't want to picture that look in their eyes, or to think of them left to the scant mercies of Tilda Brennan. Her solution to the problem of two time displaced people would have been to get rid of them, and quickly. The fact that Jack himself knows he never saw them means one of two things: either they will find their way back soon, or ... well, he refuses to think of that possibility.  
  
Jack stirs from his thoughts and taps his earpiece. "Gwen."  
  
" _Yes, Jack?_ " She sounds either startled or nervous, but he doesn't think too much on it.  
  
"Look at everything filed by Torchwood employee Greg Bishop in January of '41, and see what you can turn up."  
  
" _All right._ "  
  
"Greg kept meticulous records. If Ianto and Tosh went to Torchwood, and we know they did," Jack explains, "they would have been assigned new identities --"  
  
" _And if we can figure out who they were, then maybe we can find some more clues as to what happened to them._ "  
  
"Exactly." Jack smiles, in spite of himself. "I knew I hired you for a reason, Gwen Cooper. Now put those police skills to work and we'll go over your findings when I get back."  
  
" _Will do._ " Gwen pauses for a moment. " _And Jack?_ "  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
" _We'll get them back ... I just have a feeling._ "  
  
Jack pauses, swallowing back a lump in his throat. "I hope your feeling is right."  
  
" _Me, too._ "  
  
"Anyway," he diverts the subject, drawing a breath, "I'll keep you updated. Let me know if anything happens."  
  
Jack closes the comm link and pulls over to park on the curb outside the Ritz. He lingers in the SUV for a moment after cutting the engine, listening to it tick, then heaves out a sigh and heads off to find Bilis Manger.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
Ianto ducks under an overhang and pulls his coat collar higher, the brim of his cap lower. He purposely faces away from the lamppost, further obscuring himself in back-lit shadow. With five minutes left to wait, Ianto watches his breath cloud in the damp, cold night air, and considers the possibility of rain. There isn't much that can make this place more miserable than it already is, but rain would certainly be on the short list. He can imagine that this town was quiet and sleepy once, before conflict came sweeping down: Hitler's Lightning War. This little patio on which he stands used to be the outdoor dining area of a café; a few remnants of rusting wrought iron furniture, neglected to weather and vandalism, still sit there, and the awning over his head bears the sun-faded name the establishment once went by. Ianto builds a picture of it in his mind as the social center of the town, where little old ladies would sit sipping tea and young couples would share one dessert with two spoons. He might be wrong, but he doesn't mind romanticizing it, imagining happier times and people without the bleak and hardened look of war about them.  
  
A loose brick shakes in the mortar, the purposeful announcement of presence as someone steps up to join him. Ianto turns his head and instinctively tilts his chin down to keep his face from being seen, and lays eyes on his contact. Captain Jack Harkness looks more himself now than he had weeks earlier in the Hub, clad as he is in full uniform of a Royal Air Force pilot. Even after several meetings, Ianto hasn't figured out whether Jack's uniform is just as much a front as his own, or if the man has truly earned the rank he wears. Regardless, neither of them are serving much toward the war effort, at least not in the basest sense, contracted out as they are on behalf of Torchwood. This little town is just the latest on a list of places Jack has been sent to scavenge, with Ianto trailing him, serving as deliveryman back and forth with a chain of liaisons.  
  
"Nice evening," Jack tries, as he has tried on each occasion leading up to this. He seems to be eaten by curiosity regarding Ianto: dangerous curiosity, if Ianto is to preserve the timeline and prevent himself from becoming even more tied into Jack's past.  
  
As usual, Ianto answers with a noncommittal _hmm_ , brushing off all attempts at conversation or flirting. They do this every time, and though Ianto knows a less determined man would have given up by now, Jack is stubborn; fortunately, Ianto just so happens to be his equal in that area.  
  
In spite of that, Jack is hardly deterred. "Or, actually, pretty shitty evening. Looks like rain," he persists, putting his hands in his pockets.  
  
"Do you have the package?" Ianto inquires, schooling his voice carefully into a neutral tone. As much as he would love to stand and talk to Jack about the weather -- and that's very much, actually -- he knows better.  
  
Jack voices something that sounds like an indignant huff; in his future self, this might be manifested in the form of a pout. "You know," he says, "I don't think I've ever gotten two words out of you not related to work."  
  
 _Just doing my job, sir_ , Ianto begins to shoot back on instinct, but he thinks better of it and says nothing at all instead. He's tried very hard to bury his true personality when interacting with Jack, not wanting anything about himself to be distinguished as a marker in the other man's memory, but the one thing Ianto has difficulty curbing is his sharp tongue.  
  
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you didn't like me," Jack continues, voice dropping an octave, sly and charming all at once. "Which is just tragic, because _everyone_ likes me."  
  
Ianto smiles against his will, and finds himself glad for a combination of poor lighting and his upturned collar. If only Jack knew the half of it; but that's the point. "Pilots aren't my type," he responds dryly as he can, swallowing back a laugh. "Too flighty."  
  
Jack groans at the bad joke, just as Ianto meant him to, and yet he still goes on. "I don't even know what you look like."  
  
"That's so --"  
  
"I won't recognize you during the day and blow our cover, I know, I know," Jack grumbles.  
  
This is, of course, something that they have been over before, ever since Ianto conducted their first meeting from behind the flap of a tent. Following that, he has made it a bit of a game with himself, to come up with new and inventive ways of hiding his identity from the other man, from hats and collars pulled close, to conversing around the corners of buildings. Ianto waits to see if Jack will press the issue any further, but a simple rustle of paper breaks the silence as Jack instead extracts a small package from the pocket of his greatcoat and offers it to Ianto. It's the size and shape of a paperback novel, though even in Jack's hand it seems to be heavier.  
  
Ianto reaches out a gloved hand to take the parcel, and gets caught completely off guard when Jack's other hand closes around his wrist and tugs. Ianto gasps in surprise, and turns his face away as Jack pulls him close. Their bodies pressed flush against each other, Ianto can feel the brass of Jack's buttons and the buckle of his belt, and a hardening length against his thigh through the woolen uniform trousers. Ianto's struggles are little more than token protest as Jack backs him against the wall, beneath the shadows of the awning where, at least, his identity is safe and they're not likely to be caught.  
  
"I just have this problem," Jack murmurs, his breath warm on Ianto's neck and hand cold against Ianto's back where it slides beneath his coat. "The bigger the mystery, the more curious it makes me to figure it out."  
  
Ianto dares to raise his chin, knowing Jack can't make out more than a silhouette in the dark, and carefully breathes, willing his body not to betray him. But close enough to share a breath, Ianto is almost overwhelmed by the heady scent of fifty-first century pheromones, the same scent that clings to Jack's greatcoat and to the pillow on the bed while Ianto sleeps after Jack has long vacated it. Something dark, musky, undeniably _Jack_. Undeniable, just like the man standing in front of him right now, the one insinuating a leg between Ianto's knees, punctuating a point with the sliding friction of a thigh against Ianto's traitorous erection.  
  
Jack sounds almost triumphant, like a man who's staked his claim and is just waiting to be allowed to take it. "I'd say you're a pretty _big_ mystery, Jones."  
  
Straining with the effort of forcing himself to move, Ianto places his hands against Jack's chest and pushes the other man away. Ianto is shivering, not because he is cold or intimidated, or for any of the reasons that Jack might think, but because he only wants to sink into this, to give in, to _have_ Jack again. He feels sick with longing for home and the man whose arms are right here, ready to hold him now, but if he ever wants to get home, then he knows this has to stop.  
  
"Curiosity killed the cat," Ianto bites out, trying for cool and collected, but he sounds scattered and strained to his own ears. He slides past Jack once he has enough space to move, and snatches the package with less grace than he would like, putting it away in his coat pocket with a shaking hand.  
  
Jack sighs and turns after him, and in the advantage of better lighting, Ianto can see the flash of something that might be hurt (but probably isn't) as Jack drops his hands dejectedly back to his sides. "Fine. If you change your mind --"  
  
"I won't."  
  
"-- I may not know where to find you, but you know where to find me."  
  
Ianto maintains stoic silence as Jack gives a last snappy salute and stalks away. Then Ianto sinks against the wall again, fingers trembling and heart pounding in his chest.  
  
"That's just the problem," he dares to whisper, long after Jack's silhouette has faded into the dark.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
The Ritz dance hall stands like an empty shell, without even the sound of the ghosts and their music to keep it company. Jack wants to yell out Bilis Manger's name and demand the man's presence, but concluding that such a method is even less likely to yield results, he resorts to an old fashioned search of the rooms. Many lay bare, stripped of anything of value in preparation for the upcoming demolition. There are empty sockets in the wall where light fixtures once were, and silhouettes on the wallpaper where framed art has been removed. The entire place is disconcertingly quiet, only the echo of Jack's footsteps and the creak of door hinges stirring the air.  
  
Jack worries at just how deserted it feels, as if all connection to the past has faded. Maybe the day Ianto and Tosh disappeared, it really was a mere accident of the Rift; maybe Bilis Manger appears in those photographs because he's lost in 1941, too. Jack heaves out a sigh and produces a small torch from his coat and switches it on. The place is gloomy with the lights turned out, and dust motes dance in the beam from the light.  
  
Just when Jack has nearly reached the end of the hall, footsteps sound behind him. There's a rustling of cloth, a quiet breath; and Jack turns, flicking the torchlight in that direction, only to find no one there. A fit of his imagination, perhaps, or wishful thinking. He sighs and lowers the light again. One more door left to go, the most obvious, and therefore the least likely: Bilis Manger's office.  
  
The door stands ajar and swings open easily when Jack pushes it. The room on the other side looks like the only recently occupied one in the entire building, still bathed in the warm glow of the desk lamp. Photographs and other mementos scattered about the room are in the exact places they were the first time Jack was in here. This is not the office of a man who plans to evacuate in a few days, and the sight of it makes any doubts Jack had in his own suspicions quickly dissipate. He walks across the room to the desk and finds a book open, face-down on its surface: an old copy of Goethe's _Faust_. Jack picks up the volume, frowning at the audacity symbolized in the rounded pages, the fact that its reader is so calm when, for Jack, so many things are in tumult.  
  
"Ah, the tragedy of Faust."  
  
Jack whirls toward the source of the voice and finds none other than the man he seeks standing casually in the doorway. In fact, Bilis Manger looks exactly the same as the last time he and Jack met, neat and unworried in his outdated jacket and cravat.  
  
"He committed one foul deed and a chain of them followed," Bilis continues, nodding to indicate the book as he steps into the room. He pauses, looking sharply at Jack. "All to obtain something he wanted. Or someone?"  
  
Lowering the book, Jack narrows his eyes at the old man. "Tell me what you know," he demands.  
  
Bilis smiles serenely. "If you're looking for your friend, he's already gone."  
  
A muscle twitches as Jack clenches his jaw. "I've seen the pictures. Who _are_ you?"  
  
"I am much like yourself, Captain." Bilis comes to stand at the desk, reaching out to take the book. He turns it over in his hands, looking down at the pages, and abruptly snaps it shut. "But, like all good plays, we won't discover the outcome 'til the second act."  
  
As if Bilis intends the words as a portent, the glass in the grandfather clock against the wall begins to rattle. Jack looks away as the floorboards start to shake beneath his feet, and a blinding white light erupts from somewhere else in the building, reaching to the office's open door; he starts to leave the room, but turns back at the last moment.  
  
The place where Bilis Manger had stood is empty, as if no one had ever been there at all.  
  



	7. Flying Home

Gerald Carter knows few things in life with any certainty anymore, but there is one fact that holds true: he is getting too old for this. Over the threshold that puts him closer to seventy than to sixty, he knows there are few important things left for him to do before life lets go her surprisingly tenacious hold. Had he remained with Torchwood, he knows he would likely be long dead by now; even lingering as he does as an occasional consultant, he's often surprised -- and perhaps a little disappointed -- that he hasn't managed to die yet.  
  
The face of the institute is much different now than it had been in his days as leader, growing and changing with the ever-shifting needs of the kingdom it serves. Their purpose has never been simple, but he often can't help but think that they've overstepped too many bounds in this war. Back during the Great War, Gerald had clung to some small sense of hope. He'd believed, while younger and more foolish, that perhaps someday -- when the war was over and the moment was right -- he might actually choose to step away and settle into a quiet retirement. Never hear of extraterrestrial creatures or the Rift ever again. Perhaps even confess to Miss Derbyshire -- _Harriet_ \-- how he'd ...  
  
Well. It doesn't matter now. Those things are in the past, and the present allows him no room for regrets.  
  
The way Gerald perceives the situation (in a very real way), he has exactly one chance to make this right and correct the timeline, for all their sakes. He desperately hopes that he makes it in time.  
  
\--  
  
The mere act of stepping into Jack's office unattended seems mutinous to Gwen. This is the territory of Captain Jack Harkness, after all, the only personal area he seems to keep, having no apparent residence to speak of outside the Hub. It is therefore little wonder that her fingers shake just a little as she turns the dial on the safe, nerves still on end since pilfering the combination from his journal. The things in and on Jack's desk are surprisingly unguarded, leaving her even guiltier for having gone through them. Clearly, Jack trusts them well enough to believe he doesn't need a locked drawer. It is a sign of the absolute authority Jack holds over Torchwood, his attitude that just dares any of them to cross their enigmatic leader.  
  
" _Gwen_?" Jack's voice over the comm seems sudden and unexpected, and nearly makes her jump out of her skin.  
  
Gwen clutches a hand to her chest and reminds herself to breathe before tentatively touching her earpiece. "Yes, Jack?"  
  
" _Look at everything filed by Torchwood employee Greg Bishop in January of '41, and see what you can turn up._ "  
  
She moves over to the desk and grabs a pen and paper to jot the note down on. Greg Bishop, she recalls, was the archivist to catalogue Tosh and Ianto's things. "All right."  
  
" _Greg kept meticulous records. If Ianto and Tosh went to Torchwood, and we know they did, they would have been assigned new identities --_ "  
  
"And if we can figure out who they were," Gwen interrupts, catching on to his line of thought, "then maybe we can find some more clues as to what happened to them."  
  
" _Exactly_ ," Jack answers, and she can almost hear the smile in his voice. " _I knew I hired you for a reason, Gwen Cooper. Now put those police skills to work and we'll go over your findings when I get back._ "  
  
"Will do," Gwen answers, wincing. She'd bet a keg of lager that Jack did not hire her to rummage through his things. But, she tells herself, this is for a good cause. What sort of teammate would she be if she just sat about waiting for a miracle? "And Jack?"  
  
" _Yeah?_ "  
  
"We'll get them back ... I just have a feeling," she replies hesitantly, biting her lip.  
  
Jack doesn't say anything for a moment; she wonders if he'll respond. " _I hope your feeling is right_ ," he finally replies.  
  
Gwen lets out a little breath as the safe clicks open, and widens her eyes at all the lock boxes inside. "Me, too."  
  
" _Anyway. I'll keep you updated. Let me know if anything happens._ "  
  
The comm clicks as Jack disconnects, and Gwen spends a moment hesitating, looking at the note in her hands. If this succeeds, then she won't need to look anything up in the archives. Gwen folds the note and tucks it away, and moves back to the contents of the safe with a fresh sense of resolution and urgency after having spoken to Jack. She's more than a bit nauseous upon extracting some of the items, such as the blade Ianto dubbed the 'Life Knife' and the device that had allowed her to see echoes of the past and visions of the future. Finally, she finds what she was looking for: a sheaf of papers in a folder sealed 'Not For Use.'  
  
Blueprints.  
  
Gwen hurriedly replaces the other items and closes the safe before she returns to the open area of the Hub. She changes the frequency on her earpiece and gives it a tap. "Owen? I found them."  
  
\--  
  
There are bombs raining down on Cardiff. It's World War II and they might die here, unknown and lost to the annals of time. For Toshiko Sato, this is simply the latest in a series of things in her life that have not gone as planned.  
  
She looks sidelong at Ianto, sitting on an upturned crate beside her, and can't help but think from his brooding expression that his thoughts are running along a similar vein. This is not what they expected when they took the mission from Jack this morning, certainly. Though Tosh knows the dangers of Torchwood quite well, and has been happy to stay even beyond the five-year tenure requested by Jack, this is beyond her scope of imagining.  
  
It's quite horrible, really.  
  
Ianto notices her watching him and he turns around with a little smile. Fortunately, the strain in his expression is not out of place here in the basement of the Ritz; everyone is concerned about the fate of the city, the potential of the entire hotel collapsing in from a German plane's well-placed bomb.  
  
"Sorry," he apologizes. "I was just thinking about what we should do."  
  
"I've been thinking about it, too," Tosh says quickly, embarrassed to have been caught staring. "Torchwood?"  
  
"Yep." Ianto sighs. "I don't know what they can do for us, but it's a better chance than we've got without."  
  
"They won't have the technology to get us home," she laments. "But if we are stuck here -- then --"  
  
"We'll need some way to make a living, and as far as anyone in this year is concerned, we haven't been born yet." Ianto rubs at the back of his neck. "There's something I need to tell you."  
  
"What is it?"  
  
"His name is Captain Jack Harkness," he says, nodding across the room at a serviceman who's quietly reassuring a small group of people who look far too young and terrified to be dealing with a thing like war.  
  
"What?" Tosh asks, startled, as she looks at the man. He's handsome; American, judging from the Eagle Squadron patch on his jacket. "Why does he have Jack's name?"  
  
"I don't think he has Jack's name," Ianto corrects, raising his eyebrows. He doesn't finish the thought, but the implication is clear to Tosh.  
  
"That would explain a lot of the things Jack says," she muses. "I once found something in the archives that had a note from Jack dated from the 1950's. I thought it was just a mistake."  
  
"He can't die. He admitted it to me. I saw him come back, once."  
  
Tosh hesitates, looking down at her hands. "I didn't want to say anything, but there have been times that I didn't think anyone could survive some of the things I've seen --"  
  
"And Jack did," Ianto finishes.  
  
"Yes." She looks back up, trying to manage a smile, and steers them back around to the obvious point Ianto was trying to make when he brought the topic up. "We'll have to make sure we avoid Jack, if we're going to go to Torchwood."  
  
He seems relieved that she said it for him. "Exactly."  
  
Tosh falls silent for a moment, turning over in her head another topic that should be broached. "Ianto."  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"Do you think they'll put us in stasis?"  
  
Ianto looks contemplative for a moment, then he shakes his head. "No. There were only three alien cryogenics chambers recorded. One is in use by Tommy, one was empty, and according to official record, the third was lost. Besides, we know we're not waking ourselves up every year like Tommy."  
  
"Unless Jack is keeping it secret from us," Tosh suggests, only half serious. "Can you imagine waking up every day to Jack poking you with needles?"  
  
"No." Ianto sighs softly. "Besides, Jack didn't even want to hire me. Pretty contrary behavior if he knew I was frozen in his basement."  
  
Tosh reaches over and awkwardly pats Ianto's knee. "You and Jack, you're ..."  
  
"Yeah," he confirms brusquely, without allowing her to finish the question. "It's all right, Tosh. It's ... well, I'll be fine. And how about you? I'm sorry you're missing your party."  
  
The rattling of a bomb hitting nearby -- too close -- interrupts Tosh's train of thought and she manages to latch on to only the latter part of Ianto's statement.  
  
"Yeah," she responds. "So am I."  
  
\--  
  
Gwen is pacing nervously between the terminals when Owen returns, clattering noisily through the rolling door. "Did you find it?"  
  
"Yeah," he replies briskly, rushing over to join her.  
  
"Where was it?"  
  
"Bilis's office. Jack was right about one thing, at least: the old man knows more than he's letting on." Owen sets his messenger bag down on Tosh's desk and pulls out an object that looks like a cog or a gear of some sort, made of a brassy metal, just the right shape and size to fit in the slot Jack indicated a piece was missing from.  
  
Gwen watches while Owen studies the blueprints spread out across the desk. "Did Jack see you?"  
  
"No." Owen pulls Tosh's keyboard over and begins to type, squinting at the screen. "Cross your fingers and hope this works."  
  
Here at the cusp of actually going through with their crazy plan, Gwen feels her heart rise into her throat. It was one thing to talk about it, with the uncertainty of whether they might actually succeed. But not she's torn between her complicity with an ex-lover, and her loyalty to the man she ... well, follows and admires. "Owen, are you sure we should be doing this?"  
  
"What choice do we have?" he demands.  
  
"I don't know. We can figure something else out, we can try to determine the other coordinates first," Gwen suggests lamely.  
  
Owen rolls his eyes and slams his hand down on the desk in exasperation. "Let me guess: next you're going to say 'Jack wouldn't like it.'"  
  
"Well," she tries defensively. "He wouldn't, Owen!"  
  
"If we leave it up to Jack," Owen states, enunciating every word for Gwen as if she were slow, "Tosh and Ianto will be left in 1941. Forever. Do you want that on your conscience? Because I sure as hell don't."  
  
Gwen bites her lip, faltering. She knows she should question his motives, but she's reluctant to bring up the matter, especially with the wound so raw ... for both of them.  
  
Owen sees the uncertainty and drives his point home. "Trust me, Gwen. This is going to work, and when it's all over and they're back, Jack will _thank_ us."  
  
Gwen isn't so sure, but she knows it's futile to argue any further. Her weeks spent conducting an affair with Owen Harper taught her that he's a stubborn arse of a man. The matter of Diane Holmes and her own confession to Rhys (even if he doesn't remember it) behind them, she can't quite fathom why she ever thought it was a good -- or at least vaguely acceptable -- idea to sleep with Owen Harper. Except the sex; the sex had been very, very good.  
  
Owen takes a deep breath and looks at the mass of circuitry and wiring, the potential instrument of destruction. They could blow the Rift open, Gwen thinks frantically as she watches him. They could destroy the entire world, unravel the fabric of time as they know it ... at least, that's what Jack would say if he were here. But Jack isn't here, and regardless, Gwen knows that nothing short of an act of God -- or Jack's untimely return -- will stop Owen now.  
  
"All right," she relents, looking anxiously at her watch. "You'd better hurry."  
  
He nods, slides the gear into place, and depresses it into the slot as carefully as she's seen him deal with alien autopsies. The piece clicks perfectly in and the Rift machine flares to life, begins to rumble.  
  
Gwen braces herself as the entirety of the Hub begins to shake, energy coursing up the tower, and Mainframe sounds an alarm. She screws her eyes shut and prays hard that the consequences will not be ones they're not prepared to deal with.  
  
\--  
  
"What would you have me do, Gerald?" Tilda demands. Her lips form a thin line, brows lowering into an expression that brooks no argument. "I brought you in here as an adviser on temporally displaced individuals, _not_ for advice on how to do my job."  
  
"I've explained to you the importance of Miss Sato to the timeline," Gerald replies calmly, leaning forward in his chair. "She must be returned, one way or another."  
  
Tilda remains silent for a moment, perusing the file on Tommy Brockless. "I have enough to worry about keeping my own people alive. I won't hold the responsibility of another pair of lives."  
  
"We're Torchwood," he states meaningfully. "We take care of our own."  
  
"They're not my problem to worry about. The sooner they're out of the way, the better. Now, maybe once this war is over with --"  
  
Gerald flattens his palm hard against the desk, satisfied by the audible slam and the way it causes the normally unflappable Tilda to jump. "If you send the boy away, you're condemning him anyway."  
  
"And if we place Miss Sato in stasis, you think that's any better?" Tilda snorts her derision, and tosses the folder, as well as the temporally sealed tin back across the desk at him. "We only have the technology for one more, Gerald. Tommy Brockless is in one of the units, and you and I both know what's in the other. How do you know Toshiko Sato won't make it back some other way?"  
  
Gerald takes a deep breath, counts to ten, and gets slowly to his feet. He picks up the tin and sets it upright on the desk, then tightens his scarf around his neck. "I'll give you one month. These are uncertain times, Tilda. We can't be sure that we'll be around to fix our mistakes."  
  
Tilda looks up at him, her eyes flashing a challenge. Her hold on the leadership of Torchwood three is tenuous, even now, and he knows she views him as a threat. "Very well," she concedes. "One month. We'll keep Miss Sato in Cardiff. Mr. Jones will go to France. We'll place them both in non-combat situations. Harkness needs support in the field."  
  
"Do you think that's a good idea, Tilda, crossing the timelines of Jones and Harkness?"  
  
"I haven't the resources to train anyone new," she states blithely. "He is a resource that has fallen into my lap, why shouldn't I use him?"  
  
She is playing with fire, Gerald knows. He has seen it more than once. Half a dozen leaders have passed through this office since Gerald left the post, and he's sure there will be half a dozen more between now and the next war.  
  
He sighs and shakes his head. "I'll have their assignments arranged."  
  
\--  
  
Bilis Manger is all but forgotten by the time Jack gets back down the hallway from the man's office. Jack rushes back toward the steps, his heart racing, hardly daring to hope. The light is nearly blinding when Jack stumbles back into the ballroom. There are voices barely audible on the other side of the opening that gapes, inexplicably, in the middle of a wall. Jack throws his hand up to shield his watering eyes and presses forward, straining to hear. He can't make out the words, but it sounds like an argument.  
  
Two backlit shadows appear in the center of the glare, and Jack can no longer suppress his excitement and relief. Tosh and Ianto, it must be. His clever, brilliant team. They've found an anomaly, another opening in the Rift, and they're going to make their way back.  
  
Only one of them walks forward before the light goes out.  
  
\--  
  
"I can't do it!" Toshiko Sato protests. There are tears streaming down her face and in the light, she glows. This picture reminds Gerald of the first time he saw her, urging Tommy Brockless to _tell them, tell them what to do_.  
  
Gerald takes the young woman by the shoulders and turns her to face him, brushing a thumb across her cheek to dash away the tears. "This may be your only chance."  
  
"I can't leave Ianto. He wouldn't go without me."  
  
"You have to go," he commands gently. "I know that you make it back. I've seen it. You _must_ be there." Gerald had hoped not to give so much away, but he knows they are running out of time. The lights on the box -- the scanner -- in Toshiko's hand are flashing urgently.  
  
She glances back at the opening before looking at him again, her resolve clearly beginning to waver. "Promise me," she whispers. "Promise me you'll take care of Ianto. Let him know what happened to me, that I _had_ to go, so he doesn't think ..."  
  
"I will," he responds solemnly. "Please, go."  
  
Toshiko begins to move toward the opening, but she turns back before reaching it. "Put him in stasis," she demands, voice choked. "I'll bring him back."  
  
"I'll do right by him," Gerald promises. "Now, you _must_ go!"  
  
"Thank you."  
  
Gerald stands and watches as she turns and rushes through, hurrying before she can lose her resolve. The light dissipates as the tear in the Rift seals itself shut again. The ballroom shifts back into motion, the dancing crowd remembering nothing. Gerald puts his hat on and turns for the stairs, one last task to accomplish before he's done.  
  



	8. There Will Never Be Another You

Gwen and Owen have both gone home -- ordered away like scolded children -- and Toshiko knows she should go now, too. Even though she has been away for months, she realizes it has been only days for everyone else. Her flat will not have fallen into disrepair, and her plants can stand a little while longer without watering. She has spent more days than this before without popping home for much more than a shower and a change of clothes; such is the life of Torchwood.  
  
Tosh swivels in her chair to look between the door leading out and the door to Jack's office. There is a lamp still burning on the desk, but the captain is nowhere to be found. She considers leaving for a moment longer, without much real intention in the thought, then turns back to her computer screen. Listed on the display are all known instances of temporal displacement that Torchwood have on record. Of course, the most extensive case study is on Tommy Brockless, currently resting in stasis thanks to the alien cryogenics that are keeping him preserved until he can fulfill an unknown purpose.  
  
In another window, Tosh has brought up whatever data she can find on the alien cryogenics themselves. Ianto had been right, of course: there are three known chambers on record. One contains Tommy, another stands empty, and while Ianto had reported a third lost, it seems more complicated than that. All information on the third chamber appears to lead in circles to an ultimately dead end, as if whomever filed it intended for anyone looking to give up in frustration.  
  
Unfortunately for them, they never accounted for Toshiko Sato. And maybe that's the point, she thinks. She imagines if Gerald went and found Ianto as he promised, then he would have left everything so that only she would be able to figure it out. He and Ianto together would have known what to do, both for her and so that Ianto would not corrupt his own timeline.  
  
"I thought you would have gone home," Jack says.  
  
His voice cutting across from the office doorway gives Tosh enough forewarning to minimize the windows on her screen. She can't quite explain why she feels it necessary to do so, only knows that figuring it out would also require analysis of why she feels on edge around Jack since her return.  
  
"I had some things I wanted to catch up on," she hedges. Tosh watches Jack approach, until his blurry reflection hovers against the dark desktop of the idling mainframe on her monitor. She turns in her chair, never good with social graces but well aware it would seem rude to keep her back turned to her boss. Rude, and probably secretive, too.  
  
Jack nudges the stool over from Gwen's station and sits down a few feet away. "Do you want to talk about it?"  
  
Tosh looks at him for a moment that might only feel longer than it is, or that might really be just long enough to be considered staring. Jack's trouser braces and Spitfire cufflinks almost make her feel as if she hasn't left 1941 at all. He has his arms crossed over his chest, and somehow it makes him look authoritative and vulnerable at the same time. His expression is open but his body language is closed. Maybe he's afraid of what he will hear.  
  
"I already gave my report," she says carefully, averting her eyes.  
  
The chair creaks when Jack leans forward. His arms are unfolded now, hands resting on his knees.  
  
"And I heard it," he replies, a frown implied more in the crease of his eyebrows than a downward turn of his mouth. "But I want to know more. What happened, Tosh, when you and Ianto went through the Rift? I don't want to hear what you told everyone else ... I want to know the whole story."  
  
Tosh picks the coffee mug up from her desk to have something to do. Painfully, it makes her think of Ianto -- well, more than this conversation already is -- partly because there's no coffee in it at all, only cooling tea. None of them have tried to work the coffee machine since Ianto left, Gwen had told her earlier. It made Tosh feel angry, though she knew even then it was unwarranted, that apparently Ianto was only being missed because there was no coffee to go around.  
  
She looks back up at Jack, silently evaluating the man who is her boss and friend, and who may be the one person in the Hub actually able to appreciate the gravity of the situation. She has realized, even in the short while since her return, that she and Ianto must have been successful in keeping incognito. Jack seems to know little to nothing of them having been in 1941, and certainly not having seen either of them. Tosh does wonder what it means for Ianto's fate; it can be nothing good. Wasn't he meant to be Jack's contact in France? Unless Jack is putting on a very good show ... and Tosh doesn't believe he is. It could be normal memory loss or it could be retcon, but it seems more likely that Jack is simply ignorant of Ianto's identity to Torchwood in the war.  
  
"You went to Torchwood," Jack presses, when she still doesn't say anything.  
  
"Yes." Tosh sighs, fidgety, and sets the mug down again. "We planted the coordinates in the Ritz and then we had to get out. We trusted you to find them, but --"  
  
"But you didn't plan on them being incomplete."  
  
She frowns. "No. That worries me, actually. I wrote the coordinates down, Ianto took the photo. I know we had all of it. Someone must have tampered with it."  
  
Jack rises and gestures her over to the station where Gwen has been diligently organizing and posting every clue. Tosh stands and looks over it, seeing copies of pictures in the period with herself and Ianto in them, the aged and yellowed photograph they hid in the Ritz, and newspaper clippings from the time.  
  
"Bilis Manger," Jack says after a beat, pointing out the man in the background. "He said he was the caretaker of the dance hall. What he didn't mention is how he managed to be in both 1941 and now, looking in such great shape. Well, relatively speaking."  
  
"I remember him," Tosh confirms. "But only just. He's a time traveller?"  
  
Jack stares at the photograph for a second before he turns to her, expression grim. "I don't know what he is, but he's tied to this somehow, and I intend to find out."  
  
Tosh nods and looks down at the items still littered across the desk, recognizing them as the personal belongings she and Ianto turned over to Greg Bishop. It's been only weeks for her, but decades for her laptop and their clothes. She brushes her hand across Ianto's suit jacket with a sigh. "I didn't mean to come back without him."  
  
Jack places his hand over hers atop the pinstriped fabric. "I think he would understand. Did he --"  
  
Whatever Jack meant to ask, the question is interrupted by a sudden blaring of the alarms. Tosh jumps instinctively, accustomed after so long to listen for air raid sirens, and after an embarrassing second she realizes it's the Rift monitor going off instead. She pulls away from Jack and hurries back to her station.  
  
"What is it?" Jack asks, close on her heels. He places a hand on her shoulder and leans over her to look at the screen.  
  
Tosh checks the map, where a pinpoint flashes on a street grid overlay of Cardiff. "Rift activity ... near the city center."  
  
For a moment, neither of them breathe.  
  
"Do you think it's --" she begins to ask, barely daring to hope.  
  
Jack hardly seems certain; his doubt is easily read in the line of his mouth or the tense set of his jaw. "I don't know. Can we get a broader view?"  
  
Toshiko zooms out from the display, and is alarmed to find similar pinpricks of light appearing across southern Wales, three more of them in total, and all with curved lines leading back to Cardiff, back to the Bay area ... back to the Hub.  
  
"I'll go check it out." Jack pushes up from the chair and hurries to back his office to grab his greatcoat from its hook.  
  
Tosh stands and looks after him. "I'll go with you."  
  
He shakes his head. "No, you go home and get some rest."  
  
"You can't mean to do it alone --"  
  
"You know what a dangerous thing Owen did, opening the Rift without the coordinates."  
  
Jack's posture is resolute as he begins to fasten on his holster and checks to see that the Webley .38 service revolver he always favors is loaded and ready.  
  
"If this is what I think it is," he says after another moment, "then none of us are getting any sleep."  
  
\--  
  
The indulgence of vice holds as steady in war as in peace, or perhaps even steadier, as conflicted times drive people toward distraction. Drink and dancing will never go away; people will never stop laughing or loving or _living_ , even while Ianto feels as if he is simply existing. He is not much of a drinker, not since outgrowing it in his late teens, but he can forgive himself at the moment for being a little too far into his cups. There are empty shot glasses scattered on the bar in front of him, at eye level, where his chin has gradually sunk down to rest on the counter.  
  
A warm hand lands on Ianto's shoulder, and a weight presses at his back as someone leans down to speak low in his ear. "You look like you've lost your last friend in the world."  
  
"Maybe I have."  
  
It's not an inaccurate assessment. Ianto doesn't bother looking up; the presence is a familiar one, even if not the exact one he might crave. He nudges the shot glasses into a neat little line, like soldiers in formation, then changes his mind and reforms them into an arrow, like planes soaring to attack and defend. Ianto has just reconsidered this and begun to scatter them again when the opposite hand to the one on his shoulder closes around his wrist and stills the movement.  
  
Gray-blue shifts into Ianto's vision: the wool sleeve of a coat with brass buttons on the cuff. It hurts to look at, the memory of it painful even as the strong arm circles his shoulders instead. He leans reluctantly into it, less from desire for the touch and more because the room begins to spin around him when he tries to sit up.  
  
"You've still got me." The reassurance falls short, but proves to be at least somewhat true as helping hands keep Ianto steady on his feet. "Come on, I'll help you to bed."  
  
They make it as far as the hallway outside the room before Ianto's equilibrium fails him and he stumbles into his good Samaritan's embrace, leaning against a broad chest with less shame than he would like. The other man doesn't seem to mind much, huffing out a laugh against Ianto's hair. He keeps Ianto afloat and even finds his keys and helps him inside.  
  
Ianto crashes gratefully onto the bed, his face against the soft duvet; then his shoes and socks are slipping off his feet and there are hands reaching around for the buttons on his jacket. He rolls onto his back and the bed dips under the weight of the other man who is kneeling over Ianto and undressing him with such care. Ianto would usually be more concerned with his own dignity than all this, but instead all he can think about is how lonely he is and how they're close enough to kiss, if he just tilted his head up a little; so he does.  
  
There's a fraction of a second's hesitation from the lips against Ianto's own, sending Ianto into a brief spiral of doubt. His drink-addled mind reaches immediately for an excuse, but the words get kissed away as soon as he fathoms to speak them. The hands inside his jacket are now focused on something other than chaste intentions, curbed toward urgency as Ianto grasps for purchase at the coat that hangs around him. It envelops them both like a curtain, the smell of wool and leather and aftershave making Ianto acutely aware of so much he wants right now, and even though practicality dictates it, he can't bring himself to push the great heavy thing away.  
  
"I really like the coat," Ianto says nonsensically, months after he has last said it and years before he will say it the first time.  
  
Laughter from above mingles their breath in prelude to another kiss that tastes of nothing so much as alcohol and good intentions. Ianto squirms, in search of friction for his hardening cock and makes a plaintive sound when he finds it, wanting to ask but unwilling to say the words. He's too clumsy for buttons, so he gives up and hooks his fingers in the other man's belt loops and pulls their hips together instead.  
  
"Slow down" gets murmured against his mouth, and then there are surer hands than Ianto's working at buckles and fastenings. Nimble fingers move aside the barriers until the hard press through cloth turns into a gratifying slide of skin against skin. Ianto raises his hips into it with a moan, and reaches a fumbling hand down to circle both their cocks. The other man groans and pushes closer, lowering his head to pant short, hot breaths into the crook of Ianto's neck, lain bare by an open collar.  
  
They're both still painfully half-dressed, and Ianto finally gives in to better judgment despite his fondness for the coat and pushes the stifling thing awkwardly away with one hand, finding assistance halfway through in its removal. There are lips on his jaw, teeth nipping at his ear, and a hand over his, joining in the frantic climb toward release.  
  
Ianto throws his head back, gasping for air, feeling more sensitive than he thinks he should; if he hadn't been so long without the contact of anyone, he might be embarrassed at his reaction. Either way, it won't last -- it _can't_ \-- and despite the fact that he feels as if he'll die from the combined heat of arousal and heavy uniform layers, his mind can't quite work through the pleasure of the body enough to mind.  
  
"Please," he gasps out, squeezing his eyes shut to bank the prickling of frustrated tears. "Jack."  
  
Ianto tenses, back arching off the bed, and cries out as he comes. Silence fills the air, a certain sense of stillness that he hasn't felt in months. He holds on, clinging desperately to the moment for as long as he can; he's only vaguely aware of his partner's panting moans, the choked-off sound the other man makes when he finds release. Ianto slowly sinks back down onto the bed, and loses himself and all his problems, for a little while, to a sated and heavy oblivion.  
  
Henry Lewis disentangles himself from the man he's known, for a handful of months, as Dafydd Jones. He doesn't know who this mysterious 'Jack' is, but he can't find it in his heart to be stung by it, either. They're comrades in arms, friends, and Henry can't hold it against Jones for thinking about someone else; maybe it's the friend who's evidently died. Though the quiet Jones rarely elaborates on anything, Henry has been in this war long enough to be familiar with the signs.  
  
Henry finishes undressing both himself and Jones down to undershirts and pants, and sees the other man neatly tucked into bed before he slides in behind him. As an afterthought, he tugs up the heavy greatcoat and drapes it over Jones, watching as his friend snuggles into the wool, only adding to the mystery surrounding him. Tomorrow, Henry thinks, he'll try to learn more; for now, sleep folds around him, and he drifts off to dream of someone else, too.  
  
\--  
  
Ianto Jones does not want to think about Greg Bishop any longer. More than that, he does not want to think about the similarities between himself and the other man. The list could go on for hours: young, Welsh, archivist, blue-eyed, suit-wearer, maker-of-coffee ... from behind, they could pass for the same person. At least, for Jack they apparently could. The wool collar of Greg's suit chafes at Ianto's neck, or maybe it's just the memory of Jack's lips there in kisses that were not meant for Ianto at all.  
  
He knows it's silly, of course. Were he still in his own timeline, Ianto would accept the very logical truth of the matter: that Jack's relationship with Greg began and likely ended decades before Ianto was even _born_. A man like Jack Harkness would have had countless lovers over the years; Ianto isn't the first workplace romance and, being honest with himself, he knows he probably won't be the last. Maybe that's what really bothers him, knowing that some new, young bit of all right will be bringing the captain his coffee once Jack has had time to move on. What should make Ianto so different?  
  
Ianto jars himself out of his thoughts as Greg, walking ahead of him, stops at the door to what must serve as the conference room in this era of Torchwood.  
  
"It's just through here," Greg says softly. He steps aside from the door and gestures Ianto to go on. "I'm not permitted, I'm afraid."  
  
Tosh had not been asked to this particular meeting either, leaving Ianto to wonder what, exactly, will happen to him now. He nods to Greg and pushes the door open to step inside the room.  
  
An older man rises from his seat at the long table and turns to face Ianto. He's not particularly remarkable in a neutral suit and bold-colored tie, with his heavy greatcoat and plaid scarf draped over the chair behind him. His hair has gone completely silver, but there is no frailty in the hand he offers to shake, and even at his age -- how old must he be now, in his sixties? -- he has a particularly commanding air.  
  
"Gerald Carter," Ianto preempts the man's introduction. He catches himself in embarrassment at the lift of Gerald's eyebrows, and hurries to explain himself. "Ianto Jones. I've read all your notes on the case of Tommy Brockless --"  
  
Gerald raises his other hand to silence the words. "Please, I'd rather not know about Private Brockless. Timelines, you understand."  
  
Ianto thinks that surely if his cheeks were not flushed already, they must be now. "Yes, of course. My apologies."  
  
"Please, have a seat." Gerald waits until Ianto has sat down to sink back into his own chair, which he pulls back up to the conference table. There is a tea service sitting between them; Gerald already has a cup, and he reaches to pour one for Ianto. Then he slides the cup and saucer across, before leaning back with his own. "Would you mind telling me more about how you came to be here?"  
  
Ianto gazes at the cuppa, wishes briefly that it were coffee, and takes his time in adding cream and sugar before he answers.  
  
"We'd received reports of ghosts at the Ritz dance hall on Sage Street," he says, looking back up at the older man. "Toshiko and I were sent to investigate. We made a sweep, but we didn't find anything worth noting. Then, as we were going down the staircase to leave, we heard music coming from the ballroom. We went back up ..."  
  
It takes Ianto just under fifteen minutes to finish recounting his tale. Still, by the time he concludes with the information about the coordinates and their decision to seek Torchwood's help, his tea has already cooled to a lukewarm temperature. He drinks it anyway.  
  
Gerald doesn't respond for a moment. He sits up in his chair and reaches for a folder, which he spreads open in front of Ianto. There are photographs there, black and white (of course, Ianto thinks) shots of things that look undoubtedly like alien technology, and a map with dots marked on it.  
  
"During the Great War," Gerald states, "we thought we finally saw our own necessity. The real reason why Her Majesty Queen Victoria chartered Torchwood ... not just to defend the kingdom against extraterrestrial incursion, but also to put what knowledge we gained to use in our defense against other enemies, as well."  
  
He flips a page, to a pen-and-ink sketch of something gun-shaped and undoubtedly alien in origin; pinned to it, there's a grainy photograph of a decimated battlefield.  
  
"Just as things wash through the Rift and end up in shops or on people's mantels, they also migrate into other countries," he continues. "We weren't the only ones conducting experiments. It will be little known by your time, of course, but not all the advances in warfare were made in a strictly traditional way."  
  
Ianto looks over the various images in the file, stomach turning. "You mean to say that ..."  
  
"We got involved where we shouldn't have been," Gerald confirms gravely. "We did our best to keep that disaster under wraps, but there are rumors, there are always rumors. To a certain degree, we've attempted to take some responsibility since the Great War, keeping contacts in other countries on the continent and accepting the extraordinary and the unusual from them. Torchwood is in a much better position to do this, of course."  
  
Though Ianto has little idea what this really has to do with him, or any suspicion as to where the conversation is leading, he can't help but have his interest piqued by the information. He has spent more than a little time taking advantage of the archives at Torchwood Cardiff, studying the history of the organization.  
  
Gerald calmly sips his tea, sets the cup down on the saucer with a quiet clink of china, and sits back in his chair again. "There are certain items that were located on the continent, but they were unable to be transported back in time. Our people there have hidden them and smuggled the coordinates to us. Given the circumstances, ordinarily we would wait until the conflict is past, but Adolf Hitler is only one of many with a known interest in the phantasmagorical. Even if the items are innocuous things, we still do not want them falling into the wrong hands. One touch of a button could change the tide of this war, and if there is one thing we have learned, it's that a conflict between men should be resolved by them."  
  
"What do you want me to do?" Ianto asks, looking up again.  
  
"We've dispatched Captain Harkness to act as our agent in retrieval of the items. I'm certain you understand that the captain has certain unique ... traits ... that make him more adept to do this than others." Gerald pauses. "After some discussion, Dr. Brennan and I have decided to utilize your assistance."  
  
That makes Ianto sit up straight, the implication of not just interacting with, but working with Jack. "With all due respect, sir, Jack is the leader of Torchwood in my time. Won't it pose a danger to the timelines for him to even see me?"  
  
With a heavy sigh, Gerald sweeps all the photos and papers back into the folder and closes it. He folds his hands on top, and leans on his elbows across the table toward Ianto. "I will exercise a bit of candor with you, Mr. Jones. You are not the first temporally displaced individual I have had the dubious pleasure of finding a place for, though I pray to God that you will be the last. That being said, you seem to be a decent young man in an unfortunate situation, and I am sorry to say that I am not here to make it any easier for you."  
  
Ianto frowns. "I don't like this. I could be compromising Jack's timeline and my own. Do I get any choice in the matter?"  
  
"There isn't much choice I can give you." Gerald pauses, drawing a breath. "This would not be _my_ first choice of options for you, either, but it is what it is. Tilda wants to use you, and she will get what she wants, one way or another. I have negotiated with her and we've agreed that this assignment will last no more than a month. At the end of that period, I will do whatever else I can to help you."  
  
Though the information has hardly sunk in enough for Ianto to properly react to it, he is the perfect example of Torchwood training: he knows how to take things in stride, even this, but he has more interests than simply his own. "And what about Toshiko?"  
  
Gerald smiles, perhaps a bit ruefully. "Your on-the-spot cover story for her was a good idea, and her fluency in Japanese can be useful to the war effort."  
  
Ianto nods. It makes sense in a way that their own means of getting him out of the way does not, but he's also learned not to question orders, even if they're from a superior many years dead in his timeline. "All right. What should I do now?"  
  
\--  
  
"Jack?"  
  
It's Toshiko's voice chiming across the comm as Jack descends the steps outside the Cardiff Police Department. Thinking no one would be in the Hub, he almost hadn't bothered wearing the earpiece when he went out. He reaches up and taps it, tiredly. "Tosh. What are you doing still at work?"  
  
" _With all this going on, I wasn't exactly going to go home and leave you to it_ ," she states shortly, sounding just as exasperated as Jack feels.  
  
More grateful for the assistance and the company than he would like to admit, Jack climbs into the SUV and spends an addled moment just staring at the steering wheel. How long has it been since he slept? he wonders suddenly. He doesn't require much of it, but it must have been almost a week ago, now, when he'd last curled up with Ianto in the bunk beneath his office.  
  
Jack shakes his head to clear it, realizing Tosh just said something that has gone unanswered. "Sorry. What was that?"  
  
" _I asked what you found_ ," Toshiko replies patiently. " _And while you're at it, I was wondering what you're doing at the Cardiff PD_."  
  
"I got there too late," Jack answers. He starts the SUV and the engine turns over smoothly, but he lingers for a moment before putting it into gear. "Tour guide and a couple of witnesses reported seeing someone in Victorian clothes coming out of a bedroom in Cardiff Castle. I managed to convince them it was just some kind of reenactment, but I didn't find where the guy went."  
  
" _I'll check CCTV footage in the area._ "  
  
"It's probably too crowded, but it's worth a shot." Jack pauses, pulling away from the curb. "I just stopped by to let our police friends know to be on the lookout for the strange and unusual." He heaves a regretful sigh. "I hate to do it, but could you call Gwen and let her know I'll need her for police liaison? If I have to deal with another PC Andy wisecrack before this is all over with, I'll snap."  
  
" _I'll let her know. But that's not what I called you for._ " Tosh is full of her typical patient anxiety. " _I was thinking about what you said, about Bilis Manger. So I did some looking around for him. I don't know why no one thought of it before now --_ "  
  
Jack laughs, a bit ruefully. "Call it time for my 'why didn't we think of that?' moment. I'll blame it on preoccupation with other things."  
  
" _Well, regardless_ ," she answers, sounding inordinately pleased with herself for having been the first one to do it, " _I found records of him owning a shop_."  
  
"What kind of shop and where?"  
  
" _It's called A Stitch in Time and it seems to be, surprisingly enough, a clock shop. I'm patching coordinates through to the satnav_."  
  
Jack swings the SUV around in an illegal U-turn once the map populates, and prompts the honks and rude gestures of several angry drivers, which he ignores. Not one for much subtlety when he goes into what the others like to dub 'hero mode,' Jack flips on the blue lightbars and puts on a stunning display of wantonly ignoring traffic laws. When he gets there, it's in eighty percent less time than an almost harassed-sounding (to his imagination) satnav voice predicted the trip to take.  
  
"You have reached your destination," the computerized voice states crisply.  
  
Jack finds himself in front of a row of narrow shopfronts. The street is quiet, but not suspiciously so; this just seems to be a less-trafficked part of town. The place he's looking for is dark and inconspicuous, and a bell dings cheerfully above the door. Inside, it's the same as any antiques shop, only filled with clocks. Some of them, Jack thinks, look older than he is. He steps further into the place, compelled to tread lightly, but sees no sign of Bilis Manger -- until he turns around.  
  
"May I help you, Captain?" the old man asks, too polite with his hands clasped behind his back.  
  
Refusing to be startled, Jack replies, "We have a conversation to finish."  
  
"Ah." Bilis walks past him to the clock-covered wall, tilting his head back to study the ticking hands and swinging pendulums. "I believe that conversation was finished. Let us begin a new one."  
  
An angry muscle jumps as Jack clenches his jaw. "Tell me what you know."  
  
Bilis sighs in a way that could only be described as regretful. He turns to face Jack again. "My dear Captain, the problem is that I know _too much_."  
  
He pauses, perhaps for dramatics, and Jack considers the temporary satisfaction of punching the other man versus the long term goal of learning what Bilis knows.  
  
"You understand, there are forces here at work beyond even your -- and Torchwood's -- imagining." Bilis steps toward Jack, slowly, like a keeper approaching a dangerous animal. "I have been alive such a long time, Captain, and I have seen so much. Surely, you can sympathize with that."  
  
Jack takes a breath and exhales slowly. "What do you know?" he grits out, less forcefully than he means to.  
  
"Time is splintering, Captain," Bilis replies, an almost sad lilt to his tone.  
  
"Because the Rift was opened --"  
  
"No." The other man shakes his head. "Not simply because the Rift was opened, but because only one of your time-displaced colleagues were returned. If Mr. Jones remains in the past, then his presence there will irreparably alter our future. Now, it is contained to Cardiff. Soon, these events will begin to occur all across the world. Torchwood won't be able to stop it or even slow it down."  
  
Bilis Manger's blue eyes seem longer than even the ones of his own Jack sees in a mirror. He reaches out to take Jack's hands, and too compelled by the action, Jack can't even bring himself to pull away. The old man's hands are cool and their grasp surprisingly hard.  
  
"I can show you," Bilis whispers hoarsely.  
  
Jack's protest dies half-formed on his lips as he's assaulted by images.  
  
 _Cardiff, 1941. War so familiar that he can almost smell the gunpowder and smoke and taste the too-familiar copper tang of blood.  
  
A dance hall, filled with beautiful and young people. Their carefree attitude is only a veneer. There's a man in uniform, handsome and confident and a little sad, somehow. A Japanese woman -- Toshiko -- dancing with an RAF pilot. The back of a suit, it seems oddly out of place. The man turns. Ianto. A flash bulb goes off.  
  
The scene fades away. The war comes to life. Men falling and fallen to bullets and bombs, the senseless hatred of their fellow man. There's a young man in uniform. His face is dirty but Jack recognizes the eyes. They seem to look at him and through him for a split second, before the explosion turns everything into fire._  
  
The gasp Jack gives is like the first breath of life when he wrenches himself away from Bilis's grasp. His vision is blurry and as Jack reaches up, he realizes his face is wet. That infinitely sad look is still in Bilis Manger's eyes.  
  
"I'm sorry," Bilis says quietly. "I'm so sorry."  
  
Jack turns away, scrubbing his sleeve across his face. When he looks back, a demand for answers ready on his tongue, Bilis Manger is gone again.  
  



	9. Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me)

It's cold in the dark of Jack's bunk, and never quiet here in the depths of the Hub. Ianto can hear the hum of machinery, the _drip, drip_ of water from a leak he'll never find in the labyrinthine complex that runs beneath Roald Dahl Plass. Above them, somewhere, people are going about their lives, completely unaware of all this. Ianto shifts, bumping his shoulder against the freezing wall, and the sensation is jarring. But the warmth of Jack's hand on Ianto's hip, and Jack's leg across Ianto's legs, more than makes up for it. Then Jack begins to move, and Ianto rumbles a sleepy protest, one that he would be too dignified for if he were fully conscious.  
  
"I thought I heard something," Jack explains. "I'm going to check Tosh's new software."  
  
Ianto sighs softly into the pillow, knowing that it's probably nothing, knowing that Jack is too paranoid for his own good, sometimes. "It's cold here without you," he complains.  
  
Jack seems tempted to linger, but he slides away anyway, a hint of apology in the kiss he presses to Ianto's forehead. "I won't be gone long."  
  
The words are meant as a promise, but Ianto knows the other man will lose track of time. In a few hours, when Ianto's alarm goes off and he gets up to join the captain in the Hub proper, Jack will be surprised and apologize. Ianto considers going ahead and getting up anyway, but when he drags his arm from beneath the covers to consult his watch, the time of morning is a bit ridiculous even for him.  
  
"Go back to sleep," Jack protests, reading Ianto's actions. He steps into his trousers and tugs on an undershirt, then picks up his greatcoat and drapes it over Ianto, who is already dozing off again. "When you wake up, I'll be back."  
  
When Ianto does wake again, he's alone and confused. His first thought is that Jack lied to him, and his second is that it's unbearably hot in the room. Ianto drags the heavy coat off himself and pushes back the covers to find he's wearing an undershirt and pants, and that he's not in the Hub at all. The year 1941 hits him in concert with the massive hangover, and he spends a few moments caring less what happened the night before and more why the throbbing behind his eyes makes it difficult to remember his own name.  
  
Ianto presses the heels of both hands to his eyes, and groans as he recalls various memories in bits and pieces: encountering a strange and disoriented Jack, drinking far more than he had any business doing, and being carried back to the room by ...  
  
"All right there, Jones?" Henry asks, as if on cue with Ianto's jumbled train of thought.  
  
"Yeah," Ianto croaks out, then sinks back into the pillow, embarrassed. It's easier to scrub his hands over his face than to look at the other man, who is sitting at the room's tiny desk, writing a letter. Ianto isn't quite certain how to address the evening prior, whether to confront the issue directly or not to mention it at all. His head aches badly enough that he just wants to go back to sleep, but that seems like a rather inadequate response to the situation.  
  
"There's tea," Henry offers after a pause. "What passes for it, at least."  
  
Ianto struggles to sit up, and reaches for the cuppa on the bedside table, raising it to his mouth for a sip. The tea has cooled to lukewarm, but the liquid is still soothing to his parched throat. Henry must have brought it up to him a little while ago, now; Ianto isn't quite certain how to feel about that. He sneaks a glance over the rim of the cup to look at the other man, but Henry isn't looking his way. He's concentrating on his letter-writing, so Ianto keeps silent until he's finished his tea.  
  
"Writing home?" Ianto finally asks.  
  
Henry doesn't respond as he concentrates on finishing a sentence, then he looks up at Ianto with a smile. "Yeah. My family and ..." He trails off, laughing a little. "Well, there's this girl."  
  
Ianto leans over to put the tea cup back, then he leans back against the pillows, feeling miserably lazy.  
  
"A girl?" he asks, his interest piqued in spite of the massive headache. Asking about this at least helps to take the focus off himself, and Ianto is genuinely curious to know more about the man who has become the rather accurately-described only friend Ianto has left.  
  
"Her name is Betty," Henry explains. "I met her ... I don't know, only a few days before I was due to ship out, but I knew she was going to be the one." He pauses, looking down at the paper with a bashful smile. "At least, I hope she will be. Someday, when this war is over."  
  
 _Give it about four more years,_ Ianto thinks to himself. _Then you can go home and be with Betty. Ask her to marry you._ Ianto finds himself sincerely hoping that Henry will make it that far. So many of the people that he's met already have not. And more still will not. Ianto may not, himself. Again, he finds himself wondering about Toshiko: did she make it home safely, or did something happen to her? As hard as it is to think of her returning to their time without him, Ianto likes the alternative much less.  
  
"And you, Jones?" Henry's voice cuts into Ianto's thoughts.  
  
Ianto blinks, realizing his mind has wandered. "Hmm?"  
  
"I asked if you have anyone waiting for you back home," Henry elaborates.  
  
Picking at one of the buttons of Henry's greatcoat, still lying sprawled across the bed, Ianto thinks about the night before, the way he'd drowned his sorrows with alcohol. He thinks of Jack, and wonders whether the bit of comfort he received from Henry constitutes cheating. Ianto wonders, for that matter, whether he and Jack really have -- had -- a relationship for him to be unfaithful to.  
  
An answer would be too complicated, either way. Ianto might have let himself slip last night, to mention Jack, but Henry seems polite enough not to mention that, or what transpired between them to begin with. If Ianto tried to explain, it would have the potential to make things awkward, and it is still only 1941.  
  
"No," Ianto lies, with a pang of guilt. "There's no one."  
  
Henry's expression turns odd for a moment, but he doesn't ask the question that must be on his mind. Instead, he offers a smile and lapses back into silence, turning back to his writing.  
  
Ianto sinks down to rest his aching head on a pillow and resolves that he has a letter of his own to write.  
  
\--  
  
 _This letter addressed and sent to Emily Yamada never made it to its intended recipient. Instead, it sat on a table in a boarding house for some time as the place was evacuated - the proprietress fleeing to the north to stay with relatives, away from the vulnerable bay area - and was not recovered until after the war.  
  
The last whereabouts of Emily Yamada were never determined by any who knew her, but she is presumed to have either died unknown and remained unidentified during the course of the war, or to have relocated and never been found again.  
  
One of the more cryptic in our collection, the letter is signed simply 'IJ.' While probably from a soldier, it is also one of the few we have not to be a love note, though it does include a scrawled postscript of 'If you make it back before me, give my love to J.'  
  
The identities of neither the writer nor 'J' are known ... could Miss Yamada, perhaps, have made it back to the mysterious place referenced?_  
  
Toshiko Sato, known only a day ago as Emily Yamada, prints a copy of the scanned letter and the page of information from the collector's web archive and goes to hang it up on the board with all the other evidence. Gwen, Jack, and Owen did a good job, but Tosh has been disappointed to find since her return that there isn't much more information than what they already gathered. At least, nothing that she can concentrate on finding right now.  
  
Their search -- first for her and Ianto, now only for him -- is warring with their attempts to track all the occurrences of Rift activity. Jack currently has Gwen and Owen out in the field with him, rounding up time displaced individuals, an exercise Tosh privately thinks is about as useful as herding cats. But it's their job, and the radius has grown even further out from the Bay: Butetown, Grangetown, Splott, Roath ... and beyond Cardiff, to Newport and Swansea. UNIT have documented a few cases within the UK outside of Wales, and Tosh knows it's only a matter of time before corresponding organizations of other countries begin to report similar incidents.  
  
She sets up a search protocol on international news feeds to grab anything that would alert them to strange and unusual events, then another for the archives to help her find any more information that might be relevant to helping find Ianto. Tosh has already run three different searches, all with different hits, all with dead ends, but she's determined not to give up, even though exhaustion is beginning to creep in.  
  
Tosh sits back in her chair and presses her hands to her eyes, while thinking Jack was right: she should have gone home for some rest when she still could. When she lowers her hands again, there's a cup of tea floating in front of her; she looks up to see Owen standing there with an odd expression on his face.  
  
"I'm rubbish at making coffee," he explains, almost awkward. "But you looked like you could use this."  
  
Feeling warmed by the uncharacteristically thoughtful gesture, Tosh accepts the cuppa. "Thank you, Owen."  
  
The doctor sits down at his own desk and swivels the seat from side to side, shrugging off the gratitude as if he's embarrassed by it. "Figured it was the least I could do."  
  
Tosh smiles gently at that, then glances at the door. "I didn't hear you all come in."  
  
Owen gestures at the paving stone lift. "Took the scenic route."  
  
She nods thoughtfully, taking a sip of the tea. It's her favorite, if a little milky, but she's too touched to complain. "How did it go?"  
  
"It's blowing apart out there, Tosh. Roman soldiers outside Newport, Black Plague in the hospitals ..." Owen drops his head into his hands. "Gwen's still at the police department handling a coal miner from the 1800's that the coppers picked up. Jack's called a meeting as soon as she gets back."  
  
Tosh doesn't respond immediately, and for a few moments they fall into comfortable silence; well, as comfortable as it can be, given the way the world is trying to come apart at the seams. She turns back to her tea, and Owen spares her the need to say anything.  
  
"I've really done it this time," he states, blowing out a sigh.  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
Owen looks away, frowning deeply. "I was the one to open the Rift. I knew I was doing it wrong but I went through with it anyway. Now look how it's gone and bollixed things up."  
  
Tosh frowns, reaching out to touch her hand to Owen's knee. "It's not your fault. True, it wasn't _right_ , but you couldn't have known this would happen."  
  
"I took an oath as a doctor to help people," Owen goes on, looking Tosh in the eye again. "Now fucking _plague victims_ have been dropped into the middle of Cardiff, Tosh! I'll be lucky if Jack doesn't fire me when this is all over ... and you and I both know what that means."  
  
"Jack wouldn't," Tosh insists gently, but in the back of her mind there is a sincere worry forming that perhaps Owen is right. Jack may have to accept the truth that Tosh wouldn't be back right now if not for Owen's rash decision, but that doesn't mean he has to like it. It's still insubordination, and it can't mean much that Tosh is back if the Rift goes and rips Cardiff in two in exchange.  
  
"Wouldn't what?" Jack's voice booms from the catwalk above, surprising them both.  
  
Owen wheels away from Tosh and rubs the back of his neck, collecting himself rather quickly to call back, "You wouldn't start the meeting without us."  
  
Jack glances at them both with a wary eye, or maybe it's only Tosh's imagination. She has no idea how much of the conversation Jack might have heard, if any, beyond her two-word statement.  
  
"Gwen is on her way in right now," Jack replies. "Need you up here in five."  
  
Owen stands, giving a curt nod. "Be right up. C'mon, Tosh."  
  
\--  
  
It's 1941, and the Doctor is not coming back for Jack Harkness. In fact, in moments such as this one -- when he's feeling particularly uncharitable toward the Time Lord and everyone (and everything) else -- Jack would go so far as to bet that the Doctor isn't even looking to _run into_ him again. At this point, only the ingrained discipline of a (former) Time Agent has kept Jack from popping off to London in January and sitting in wait for the Doctor, just so that he can punch the big-eared alien in the nose. Only the consequences of crossing his own timeline prevented Jack from going and doing something stupid.  
  
Well, something stupid of that nature, anyway. There are plenty more troublesome things Jack can get up to in Cardiff, and just now he's gotten into one of them. Tretarri vexes him -- no, that's not the word for it; what is he doing, turning _British_? Jack has not been humbled enough by his decades on Earth that he can't still get properly pissed off -- as it has on repeated occasion, and this evening is no different.  
  
Jack feels like he's gone on a particularly spectacular bender, minus the alcohol and the good time that comes along with it. He knows that soon, he'll lose consciousness entirely from the strange sickness that has already left his head spinning and stomach churning. He needs to find someplace to stay, somewhere safe to sleep for a few days, though Jack isn't quite sure where that will be. He doesn't want any of his fellow Torchwood personnel knowing about this, not even Greg, and especially not Tilda.  
  
Fighting to maintain his focus, Jack turns the corner from the alleyway into the street, bracing himself with a hand on the bricks of the building beside, and lumbers straight-on into someone. The person is a man, who grunts in surprise from the collision and puts out his arms to catch Jack's swaying form. Jack staggers back just in time to catch a glimpse of blue eyes before the man awkwardly releases Jack.  
  
Not entirely a stranger, Jack realizes, as he watches the man lower his chin and pull up his collar.  
  
"Jones," he mumbles.  
  
This is just what he needs right now, Jack thinks, annoyed as comprehension dawns that this is _finally_ his chance to see what his mysterious, faceless contact looks like. Except that Jack is so dizzy that he can't make out the man's features, not when there are four of him floating there.  
  
"What's happened to you?" Jones asks.  
  
He has a hand on Jack's elbow, perhaps doubtful of Jack's ability to remain standing of his own power. Jack isn't offended; he doubts his ability to remain standing, himself.  
  
"Long story." Jack doesn't want to explain. "I'll be fine."  
  
Jack blinks a few times, succeeding in clearing his vision long enough not to make out Jones more clearly, but to instead see another figure approaching.  
  
"Jones?" the new stranger asks. "Is everything all right?"  
  
Eyes narrowing, Jack whips his head back around to look at Jones, and immediately wishes he hadn't. The world blurs at the edges in an way Jack would find interesting if he didn't also feel like vomiting, and he crumples down to the sidewalk. After a moment, Jack becomes vaguely aware of an arm around his shoulders helping him to sit upright, and he turns his head to see the new guy kneeling there.  
  
Jack takes in the uniform, the greatcoat, and turns an accusing stare up at Jones, who is still standing and looming.  
  
"Thought you didn't like pilots."  
  
Jones looks away, failing to respond immediately. His pilot friend offers Jack an amiable, if confused, smile instead.  
  
"Sorry," he says, in an accent that sounds a bit northern, "I'm Henry."  
  
"Wish I could say it was a pleasure," Jack replies, not trying to be rude so much as attempting to focus. He spends a brief moment of clarity sizing Henry up. Average height, average build, _average guy_. What makes _Henry_ more appealing to Jones than Jack? It's almost enough to get offended over.  
  
"Is there somewhere we can help you to?" Jones inquires, sounding impatient.  
  
Jack struggles to his feet, resenting Henry's help up as much as he must, reluctantly, appreciate it. He leans his shoulder against the building and tries to collect his thoughts. It's more difficult than anticipated. "Need to sleep."  
  
Jones opens his mouth, maybe to protest, but Henry nods an agreement. "Last time I got that pissed, I definitely had to sleep it off."  
  
Jack glares, but doesn't argue; it's not as if he can actually _explain_ to them that he's not drunk. Even if Jones has ties to Torchwood, he's not very likely to take 'a neighborhood kicked my ass' as a valid excuse.  
  
"We can show you to the place we're staying," Henry offers, cheerfully oblivious to any secret tension between the other two men.  
  
Ianto turns his head, not wanting Henry to see the imploring look that he can't possibly understand. He would rather answer as few questions as possible, and the longer this encounter goes on, the more Ianto gives away, the more questions Henry is likely to have. The man is trusting, not stupid.  
  
Behind Ianto, Henry is helping Jack to walk more steadily. Ianto leads the way, not consciously keeping them a few paces away so much as becoming lost in his own troubled thoughts. It's clear there is something wrong with Jack, but Ianto can't fathom what. He has never seen the man like this before, and there had been no scent of alcohol on Jack's breath. Drugs? Jack doesn't seem the type. Ultimately, Ianto must add this strange occurrence as another entry on the list of things he doesn't know about Jack, which is infinitely larger than the list of things he does.  
  
The walk back is mercifully short, at least, and soon Ianto and Henry are maneuvering an increasingly incoherent Jack into a room. Ianto wrestles Jack out of his coat before Henry lets Jack collapse onto the bed, and carefully hangs it on a hook by the door where Jack can easily find it. Ianto tugs off Jack's boots as well, but feels uncomfortable doing anything more with Henry still in the room, not while Ianto is doing his best to pretend Jack is just a stranger or, at best, an acquaintance.  
  
Henry regards Jack for a contemplative moment, then moves for the door. Ianto follows, certain he doesn't manage to breathe again until they are both standing safely in the hallway with the door shut between them and Jack.  
  
"Any idea what that was all about?" Henry asks.  
  
Ianto shakes his head and lies. "Poor bastard's drunk, I'd reckon."  
  
"That doesn't sound half bad right now." Henry nods his head down the hall. "Come on, I'll buy you a drink."  
  
Miserably, Ianto casts one last glance in the direction of Jack's door, then falls into step behind Henry. A drink doesn't sound half bad right now, indeed.  
  
\--  
  
The Hub is mercifully quiet right now, but Tosh is certain it won't stay that way for long. Gwen has gone home to check on and make her excuses to Rhys, to grab a quick shower and maybe a couple of hours of sleep while she's at it. Owen and Jack are both out in the field, and Tosh remains behind as support on the comms.  
  
Jack has now shied away several times from letting Tosh join them, claiming that they need someone at the Hub. She isn't certain whether he's afraid of something happening to her again, or if he wants someone to watch the Rift in case some sign of Ianto appears. Perhaps it's a little of both; whatever it is, it seems an uncharacteristically emotional response from Jack.  
  
Tosh can't find it in her heart to blame him, though. How many people has Jack lost over the years? She's done some digging and, though the records are well-concealed, she can find traces of Jack dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century. She has no idea how Jack has lived so long -- and aged so little -- but certainly it must be a terrible thing to just _keep going_ while everyone around you grows old and dies.  
  
Tosh has spent the last few hours, on and off when Jack and Owen didn't need her, cross referencing death certificates and official records with the levels of the morgue, and wonders how many of the bodies Jack put there himself. Tosh still experiences a little shiver of discomfort when she sees Suzie's name, and then gives a small smile at the name of Tommy Brockless.  
  
Ianto's record-keeping is meticulous, and Tosh has been able to easily account for most of the bodies. Former employees, mostly, and the occasional victim of a death by Torchwood whose body could not be released back into the public system. The spreadsheet grid Tosh has open is a rudimentary way of cataloging, compared to how they normally do things, but it's gotten the job done.  
  
On the highest level of the morgue, there is one drawer that has an occupant that Tosh _can't_ account for. She's checked and checked again, and there is certainly someone there. The sleeper in the missing cryogenics chamber, Toshiko's mind tells her; _Ianto,_ her heart hopes.  
  
Tosh quickly checks in on her colleagues in the field. Owen tells her they're headed back, which doesn't give her much time. Tosh hops up from her chair and hurries down to the morgue, feeling a mixture of hope and trepidation. If it is Ianto, then it means Gerald kept his promise, that Ianto survived the war and will be back with them. If it isn't ... well, as much as Tosh must accept that as a reasonable possibility, she doesn't have to like the idea of it. She'll face it when -- _if_ \-- it becomes fact.  
  
The morgue is chilly and has never been one of Toshiko's favorite places in the Hub; in fact, she's hard-pressed to remember the last time she was even here. Even when it's time to wake Tommy on a yearly basis, Owen brings the chamber up to the medical bay; they don't congregate down here.  
  
The drawer has a tag with a number and no name, and Tosh wonders if the thought ever occurred to Ianto to wonder who might be inside. Certainly it must have; Ianto prides himself on knowing the Hub inside and out.  
  
"Here goes nothing," she breathes to herself, and reaches for the latch.  
  
Tosh pulls, but the door sealing the drawer shut refuses to budge. Locked, she supposes. She hadn't wanted to share her hypothesis with Jack beforehand, strangely averse to getting his hopes up for what could turn out to be nothing, but now she'll need to ask him for the lock-picking device from his safe.  
  
A hand lands on Toshiko's shoulder before she can turn, and she gives a shrill, startled yelp before she can help herself.  
  
"It won't open," Jack says quietly behind her. "It's temporally sealed."  
  
Tosh tries to calm the pounding of her heart before she speaks. "Jack, I --"  
  
"It's not him." Jack sounds like he regrets the fact.  
  
Tosh turns and looks up at Jack. His expression is unreadable, his shoulders slumped with either exhaustion or sadness.  
  
"It ... was a good theory, Tosh," he goes on. "But that drawer's been sealed as long as I can remember. Since before 1941."  
  
"I'm sorry," she finds herself saying, though she isn't sure why. Sorry for coming back without Ianto, sorry that Ianto isn't inside that drawer, sorry that Ianto might never come back. Sorry that Ianto probably never will.  
  
Jack winds his arms around Tosh's waist and pulls her into a tight embrace. "So am I."  
  
Tosh closes her eyes and rests her head against Jack's chest. She can't even be bothered to fight the tears stinging her eyes. "I was supposed to tell you that he ..."  
  
"I know," Jack responds, his voice choked with tears of his own.  
  
"You saw the letter."  
  
"No." Jack shakes his head sadly. "I didn't have to."  
  



	10. I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire

Toshiko sets her bag and her keys down on the table beside the door, and tries not to feel like a stranger in her own flat as she walks through to the kitchen. Though this is not the first time she's been home since returning from the past, everything still seems a bit ... unreal. She knows it's just exhaustion speaking to her, that once she grabs something to eat, she'll feel better. She may even take Jack up on his suggestion of a nap, as even her eyes are beginning to ache, throbbing beneath her eyelids when she closes them.  
  
The state of her refrigerator is disappointing, so Tosh just puts the electric kettle on for tea and leans against the counter with her head in her hand while she thinks about ordering takeout. She's just begun to doze off when the entire _building_ begins to shake, snapping her awake again. Tosh's mind immediately jumps to the idea of falling bombs, then adjusts to the more likely idea of Rift activity. She runs back to get the PDA from her bag and check the Rift readings, and grabs her mobile while she's at it.  
  
The first person Toshiko tries to call is Jack, but his phone routes directly to voicemail. Before she can even hang up and dial out again, an incoming call pops up from Owen.  
  
" _Tosh!_ " he shouts as soon as she picks up the line, before Toshiko can even say anything. " _What the bloody hell is going on?_ "  
  
"I don't know yet," she answers, trying to cradle the phone against her shoulder and study the PDA, while moving to get the front door open.  
  
The gigantic form that steps - no, _stomps_ \- from the blue ribbon of Rift energy by Cardiff Bay casts a shadow that must be a hundred feet long across the streets below. The sight of it nearly makes Toshiko drop the phone, while her PDA beeps wildly at the overload of information that comes from the Rift readings; that is, the Rift apparently being flung wide open.  
  
"Oh, my God," she whispers, stunned.  
  
" _What? What is it?_ " Owen demands finally, over the chaos of what sounds like falling rubble.  
  
His voice snaps Toshiko out of her haze.  
  
"The Rift is open," Tosh replies, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. If Owen hasn't noticed the giant _thing_ that just walked out of it, then she isn't going to volunteer the information just yet. "Owen, where are you?"  
  
" _Trapped in the Hub_ ," he answers. " _I was on my way back in and_ this _started - part of the stairwell's collapsed behind me so I can't go back, and the door won't open._ "  
  
Tosh braces herself in her open doorway while the world continues to shake around her, and thinks hard about what to do next. "The door probably locked itself. I couldn't get Jack on the line ... keep trying him while I call Gwen, and I'll come get you out as soon as I can."  
  
" _Wait, Tosh -_ " Owen blurts before she can hang up. " _How the hell did this happen?_ "  
  
"Jack," Tosh answers grimly. "Jack must have done it."  
  
Toshiko disconnects the call in the middle of Owen's outraged response, and immediately rings Gwen. It takes a couple of tries before the phone finally connects - the cellular system is probably overloaded with panicked and emergency calls at the moment, Tosh imagines - and Gwen answers.  
  
" _Tosh!_ " Gwen nearly shouts, much the way Owen had. " _Where are you? What's going on? Have you heard from Jack?_ "  
  
"The Rift is open," Tosh explains as calmly as she can, while loading things back into her bag and getting her keys. She swaps out her heels for more practical shoes, and casts a regretful glance back into the kitchen where her kettle is boiling, before shutting the door behind her. So much for _that_ cup of tea.  
  
Not wanting to hear the same questions twice, Tosh forges on quickly before Gwen can respond. "Owen is trapped in the Hub. I just came home, but I'm headed back there to get him out. The last time I saw Jack, he was in his office, and that was right before I left, so he might still be in the Hub."  
  
Somehow, it doesn't seem as wise an idea to tell Gwen that Jack was the one to open the Rift just yet.  
  
" _I'm still at the station_ ," Gwen tells her. " _I'll get all the coppers sorted and see if I can -_ "  
  
"Wait," Tosh interrupts, glancing quickly at the PDA while she rushes down the sidewalk. The earthquake-like vibration of the ground has subsided into the occasional tremor, but the ripples still threaten to knock her off balance when she's not paying attention. "The SUV is headed out of the city. That must be Jack."  
  
Over the line, Toshiko can hear the muffled sounds of Gwen yelling instructions to the police officers, a very no-nonsense tone in her voice demanding their attention and obedience. She would have made a great senior police officer someday, Tosh supposes, if Torchwood hadn't gotten to her first.  
  
" _Sorry, Tosh_ ," Gwen apologizes when she gets back on the line. " _I'm headed out now. What did you say about Jack?_ "  
  
"He must have the SUV," Tosh repeats. "It's headed out -- no, it's just been parked."  
  
" _I have my car,_ " Gwen tells her. " _Put the coordinates through to my mobile and I'll -_ "  
  
For the second time, Gwen gets interrupted, but this time it's by a sudden rolling noise that sounds like a peal of thunder, but is too unnatural to be that. A little way from the heavily populated Bay area, in the direction Jack had gone, a blue bolt of lightning crackles through the darkening sky. It goes on several seconds, causing Toshiko to stop in her tracks and consult her PDA again.  
  
" _Tosh_ ," Gwen says quietly. " _Do you see that?_ "  
  
Tosh doesn't answer, busy glancing between her readings and the sky. By the time the freak lightning storm subsides and the sky over Cardiff begins to clear again, Mainframe's systems are going mad with all the calculations.  
  
"The Rift has closed," Tosh finally breathes. "Whatever Jack did out there, it worked."  
  
By the time Toshiko finally reaches Roald Dahl Plass - only a few blocks' walk from her flat, but having taken much longer in the chaos - she sees the reason for the mass panic. There are bodies strewn all about, slumped over the wheels of crashed cars near the Millennium Centre and lying flat on the pavement as if they just crumpled where they stood.  
  
A shudder runs down Tosh's spine as she picks her way through, a distinct chill telling her that they are responsible for this. If Owen hadn't opened the Rift to bring her back, if Jack hadn't tried to open it _further_ in order to stop all this and put everything back in its place, then all these people would still be alive.  
  
Toshiko reaches the invisible lift without anyone noticing her before she vanishes into the perception filter, and activates it with the PDA. By the time the paving stone creaks out of place and begins to lower her into the Hub, her pragmatic mind is already filling with thoughts of how they will handle the cleanup above.  
  
Then her attention is turned to the full extent of the destruction inside the Hub, and it leaves her speechless. A cloud of smoke hangs around the Rift manipulator, the circuits hissing and popping and burnt up wires throwing off sparks. The conference room has been destroyed, the glass blown out across the floor below. At least one of the terminals is overturned, and all the chairs have spun out from their desks and run into the nearest hard surfaces that would stop them. Gwen's evidence board about Ianto has turned onto the floor, all the once neatly pinned papers blown off and scattered about.  
  
Tosh steps off the lift and takes a deep breath afterward to remind herself that her first concern at the moment is to free Owen. She overrides the lock on the door; it rolls back on its track and soon enough lets through a disgruntled but unharmed Owen.  
  
"Tosh," he states, sounding relieved; to see her or to be freed, she isn't sure, but maybe it's a combination of both.  
  
"Owen," she answers. "Are you all right?"  
  
"I'm fine. Looks like I missed all the action but I get to be around for the cleanup," he observes, looking around the nearly destroyed Hub. "Where are Jack and Gwen?"  
  
"Jack took the SUV out. There was this - I don't know, this _creature_ , Owen. It was enormous, it came through the Rift when it was opened and ... it killed so many people."  
  
Tosh pauses, then abruptly turns away to walk briskly back to her desk. Fortunately, it survived the chaos relatively unscathed, other than the glass that seems to be littering everything. Tosh grabs a folder and carefully brushes the shards from her seat, tips more glass off her keyboard, and sets back to work.  
  
"I'll go back up and see if there's anything I can do to help," Owen offers after a brief, awkward silence. He walks over to the lift and hops onto the stone. "Give me a boost?"  
  
Toshiko activates the lift on Owen's request and spends a moment watching it rise toward the surface before she turns back to her terminal. Her earpiece managed somehow to not be lost during the chaos, so she fits it back into her ear just in case the others need her.  
  
  
\--  
  
Jack Harkness does not know what to do. This is hardly the first time in his long life that such a thing has occurred, but never before has the feeling been accompanied by such a sense of helplessness. Jack might not have earned his current position at Torchwood so much as received it as Alex Hopkins' bloody inheritance, but he knows a great deal about a great many things: the past, the future, the human race, and alien races the likes of which humanity can scarcely dream of.  
  
Usually for Jack, knowing what to do is merely a matter of being able to make the right choice. Maybe not the good choice or the easy choice, but the _right_ one out of all those provided. In this situation, however, Jack has no _options_ , only his own ability to come up with something ... and he's at a loss for solutions.  
  
Across the street from the rooftop where he stands, the Ritz dance hall is being prepared for demolition. An entire block of Sage Street is closed as a safety precaution, and the area immediately surrounding the building and the ones adjoining is cordoned off. Jack watches the construction dust begin to rise, and he takes a deep breath of the cold air to steady himself. The morning weather is typical of Cardiff this time of year, but Jack is certain the temperature is not responsible for the chill that runs down his spine as the walls of the old building start to come down.  
  
Though Gwen posed the question days ago, Jack still has no idea what the demolition of the Ritz will mean for their ongoing search for Ianto. Jack knows by now that their chances of finding their missing teammate - his chances of finding his missing lover - are dwindling, anyway. The Rift is volatile enough without being tampered with, and Owen is more likely to thank dumb luck than good judgment that his impulsive decision to open it was actually successful in bringing Toshiko home.  
  
Time is already bleeding through. Displaced people and things continue to appear in their time and, Jack imagines, people from the twenty-first century may well be disappearing into the past and future. He has no idea how to stop it and, no matter what Jack's personal feelings are on the matter, Ianto's fate seems peripheral compared to the wellbeing of time itself.  
  
"It's a shame," a soft voice says from behind Jack; a voice that is nearly enough to stop the captain's heart from beating.  
  
Jack turns his head and stares hard at the man - or apparition - that walks up to stand alongside. He - or _it_ \- looks very much like Ianto Jones, though the hair is a little different and, instead of a suit, he appears in the green uniform of the British Army. Jack knows quite well, however, not to trust his eyes; it is very unlikely that anyone could be up here with him, and even less likely that it could be the missing member of his team.  
  
"It's a beautiful old building, the Ritz," Ianto goes on, admiration shining in his eyes as he looks down at the old dance hall. "It survived the Blitz, only to go out like this. I'll bet every night Cardiff was bombed, when the _all clear_ sounded, and those dancing girls and their soldiers came out unscathed, they thought nothing could harm them down there."  
  
Jack breathes a sigh that carries Ianto's name, even as he shakes his head in denial of what he thinks he sees. He takes a tentative step closer, but is too afraid, too _hopeful_ , to reach out and prove his suspicions as truth.  
  
"I thought nothing could harm _me_ there." Ianto finally turns to look up at Jack with sad and weary eyes. "And now I'm going to die in a war I never should have fought in, during a time I never should have been in."  
  
Jack shakes his head again, seized with a sudden pang of guilt and longing. "I'm sorry," he whispers roughly. "We've tried everything -"  
  
"Not everything," Ianto interrupts, quietly emphatic. "You have to open the Rift, Jack. If you don't, I won't be the only person who dies."  
  
"I can't," Jack answers, his voice cracking on the words. "It could tear _everything_ apart."  
  
Ianto steps closer, but he doesn't reach out to touch Jack, either. "You don't understand. Everything will be torn apart if you _don't_. You have to take the risk."  
  
"Hey!" One of the construction workers on the other side of the street waves his arms, yelling up to Jack. "You need to clear out! You're not allowed to be up there right now!"  
  
Though Jack's distraction is brief, by the time he glances back, Ianto has vanished.  
  
"Ianto?" Jack calls, though he knows it's in vain. Ianto was never really here at all, so what does that mean? Is Jack going mad?  
  
Jack crosses to the access stairs and hurries back down through the building, calling Tosh over the comms as he goes.  
  
" _Yes, Jack?_ "  
  
"Check for any Rift activity at or around my current location," Jack instructs in a rush. "I'm across from the Ritz - I'll be back to the Hub in a few."  
  
" _Got it._ "  
  
Jack signs off and walks the block down to where he left the SUV parked on the curb. As he rounds the front of the vehicle and goes to get in, he's not entirely surprised to find Ianto - or at least the thing that looks like Ianto - blocking his path. This time, instead of the uniform, Ianto appears to be wearing one of his usual suits.  
  
"You're not real," Jack insists with narrowed eyes. "But I appreciate the attention to detail: the tie Tosh gave Ianto for Christmas last year?"  
  
Ianto just seems amused, and then only for a brief second. "I'm here with a message. You _must_ listen to me, Jack. If you don't, hundreds - _thousands_ \- of lives could be lost."  
  
"It's all a trick," Jack argues. "The answer is _no_. I don't even know why I'm talking to you right now -"  
  
Jack reaches for the door handle, but Ianto shifts to block him and looms close, without touching. The intensity, the realism, of his stare leaves Jack momentarily paralyzed.  
  
"When you open the Rift," Ianto coaxes softly, "I'll come back to you. We left so many things unfinished ... like that dance ..."  
  
Managing to look more immovable than he feels, Jack sets his jaw and stubbornly turns away. Ianto sinks back, disappointment flickering across his face as he brushes past Jack without touching him at all. Jack closes his eyes and sags heavily against the door of the SUV; when he looks again, Ianto is nowhere to be seen.  
  
Jack scrubs his hands over his face and takes a moment to put himself back together. In the world of Torchwood, there's no such thing as impossible, but Jack knows it's utterly _improbable_ that Ianto could have actually been there. Either someone is playing tricks, or Jack himself is going mad; Jack finds he isn't fond of either option being the truth.  
  
\--  
  
Ianto wakes up. That he wakes up at all seems a miracle. He opens his eyes toward the ceiling, and tries to take stock of himself. He can see the white tiles, and they tell him he is not blind. He can smell the sterility of hospital over the stench of death, and it tells him he must have gotten lucky, if such a thing as luck exists in this place. Ianto moves his head from side to side and strains his ears to hear; everything sounds muffled, as if it's coming from very far away. His mind fills in, from some place in hazy memory, that this is only understandable; he _had_ been very close to the bomb blast, after all.  
  
Simply the thought of the word _bomb_ \- the image it conjures of fire, destruction, and terror - causes Ianto to start sharply. He pushes himself up on his elbows and looks down at his body, expecting to find the mangled remains of a man. Instead, he sees a drab blanket and what appears to be the outline of legs; and attached to them, feet. Ianto pushes back the covers and gazes at his legs, sits up a bit further and finds his feet, both of them, with all ten toes intact and, when he summons the will, wiggling upon command.  
  
What he cannot fathom then is why he is in this bed. He feels his head, neck, chest, stomach and sides. Then he finds it, there on his thigh, the square-bandaged area thick with gauze and tape, with blood and pus speaking of infection leaking through to the surface. Ianto's stomach turns, and he covers himself again, quickly, before he must lean over the edge of the bed and give in to his urge to retch. There is something about the sickly-sweet smell of wounded human flesh that Ianto cannot bear, even if he has been elbows deep in an alien corpse before without batting an eyelash.  
  
The wound, now seemingly brought into existence simply because he _knows_ it is there, throbs painfully. Ianto closes his eyes and tries to remember what happened, but he can summon only the vaguest details, all of them of _pain_ , the fearful certainty that he was going to die. He can't help but wonder, with a flash of miserable curiosity, why it's always _him_. Why did he survive Canary Wharf, why did he survive alien invasion or Lisa or Jack or cannibals or even fucking World War II?  
  
 _Well_ , Ianto supposes, he hasn't survived it _yet_.  
  
Minutes tick by, wherein Ianto thinks he must drift off. When he opens his eyes again, there's a nurse by his bedside and his legs are cold; he grits his teeth, realizing she is about to change the dressing on his wound. She's pleasant, though, in that careworn sort of way women seem to be now, and she strikes up a conversation to distract Ianto while she cleanses the area. He's fortunate, she tells him, they'd thought he would lose the leg, the shrapnel was buried so deep. Even now, they must be careful to keep the infection from settling in. This sort of thing could kill a man on the battlefield.  
  
Ianto can't quite decide if he would have preferred to die. Certainly, he has no wish for death, would never think of taking his own life. But upon close and personal examination of his own feelings, he isn't sure he wants especially to live, either.  
  
"Name like Dafydd Jones," the nurse is saying, "you must be from Wales."  
  
Ianto pulls his attention from the ceiling and his own misery. "Yes."  
  
"Well, Lieutenant, I think you and I are going to be seeing a lot of each other now you're awake, so I may as well introduce myself: I'm Susan."  
  
"Pleasure to meet you, Susan," Ianto answers. With his voice straining to push the words out, he realizes just how raspy and awful it sounds. "How long have I been here?"  
  
"Going into the third day now," Susan replies. "You spent the first fighting off a fever - it's no wonder that you don't remember it."  
  
Ianto makes the barest of noises to acknowledge her response, and turns his attention back to the ceiling. It's nothing against her, not really; she's well and nice enough, with the sort of chatty personality exhibited as she cares for him that reminds Ianto of his sister, Rhiannon. It had been a couple of weeks since he'd called her, when he disappeared. Ianto wonders if Jack went personally to give her the news, or if he sent Gwen to do the dirty work. Gwen would have been better, Ianto decides; she would have given Rhi a cuppa and a pat on the hand, and assured her that everything would be all right.  
  
"Are you from South Wales, Lieutenant? I thought I recognized the accent. My granddad was Welsh, rest his soul. He died in the last war. I barely remember that one, mind you, though I was born in the midst. You look like you would have been little more than a babe in arms, yourself. How old are you, love?"  
  
"Twenty ..." Ianto closes his eyes, frowning as he does the math in his head; has it been so long? "Twenty-eight."  
  
Susan chuckles softly. "You sound like you're not sure."  
  
Ianto opens his eyes again and manages a smile up at her. "I'm not."  
  
"Probably still a little rattled, you are." She smiles sympathetically.  
  
Grunting an agreement, Ianto raises his head a little to watch while she works. Susan's efficiency is something Ianto can appreciate, the way she sets about redressing the wound. It almost distracts him from something else pressing on his mind.  
  
"Did they recover my things, too?" he asks. "My uniform. There was a letter ... I need to know if anyone found it - posted it."  
  
Susan turns a serious eye on him.  
  
"It wasn't meant to be posted. I'm not done with it yet," Ianto finishes explaining. He lets his head drop back to the pillow with a sigh.  
  
The nurse completes her work in silence, then pulls the covers back up to Ianto's chin, where she tucks them snugly. Susan turns quietly to a stool by the bed and picks up a wrinkled jacket, which Ianto recognizes as his own. "Now, where would it be?"  
  
"Inside breast pocket."  
  
Ianto endures a somewhat unnerving silence as Susan searches his jacket pockets, but finally the nurse extracts a crumpled and dirty envelope.  
  
"This?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
Susan turns the envelope over in her hands and tries to straighten the wrinkles out. "'Captain Jack Harkness'?" she asks, raising her eyebrows.  
  
"Yes," Ianto answers, trying not to sound defensive.  
  
But Susan doesn't seem to be concerned with the name on the envelope for any suspicious reasons. Instead, she steps a bit closer to the bed and notes, "He may not be the same, but we've a Captain Jack Harkness a few wards over. I hate to be the one to break it to you, love, but I'll be surprised if he makes it through the night."  
  
Ianto reaches a hand out to take the letter from her. "It's all right," he answers gruffly, while stuffing the envelope beneath his pillow. "They were only orders."  
  
Susan does not look convinced, but Ianto supposes he wasn't very convincing anyway. "All right, love. I'm off to finish my rounds. Yell if you need anything."  
  
Ianto dozes for a little while after Susan leaves, but after enough time has passed for him to be sure the ward is silent and relatively empty of anyone who might actually try to stop him, he drags himself back into alertness again. Ianto is fairly certain that he's not meant to leave bed, but there is a dressing gown draped over a chair (probably belonging to the person in the bed next to him) that he grabs and shoves into anyway with some difficulty. Standing is another story, which turns into a rather painful ordeal as his leg and the stitches in it scream protest.  
  
Finally, Ianto manages to hobble on a pair of stolen crutches, out of the ward he's located in, and into the hallway. From there, the pitiful moans and whimpers of the very badly injured lead Ianto in the direction he believes he needs to go. The feeling of impending death hangs palpably over the next ward he enters, and Ianto fights the chill it sends down his spine. It doesn't matter how much he has seen with Torchwood; the surrealism of it cannot compare to _this_.  
  
Fortunately for Ianto, his search down the rows of beds ends near the back. The curtain is drawn with enough of a gap left open for him to see that the occupant of the bed is, indeed, Jack. Ianto moves closer and awkwardly eases himself down to sit in a chair beside the bed. Jack looks like the dying man that he is, battered and bruised, and Ianto can't imagine what must have happened to him.  
  
Ianto has no idea if Jack is comatose or merely sleeping, but at a time like this, either would not change the outcome of Ianto's decision to reach for Jack's hand. How many deaths will this make? Ianto wonders. How long will Jack have to wait for the darkness this time? That's all there is, Jack has said, darkness; Jack didn't spare Ianto's feelings on the matter when asked what it's like to die. Jack's firsthand account runs contrary to what Ianto was brought up to believe, but Ianto isn't certain what he believes anymore. He only hopes that when the darkness comes for him, it is a peaceful one.  
  
Jack stirs and his eyes crack open, but he doesn't seem to register Ianto's presence; or, if he does, he's simply too far gone to speak. Ianto gives Jack's hand a squeeze and listens to the labored breathing, watches the rise and fall of a chest that seems broken inside. Jack weakly flexes his fingers around Ianto's, then he closes his eyes again.  
  
"I shouldn't be here," Ianto says very quietly, uncertain whether Jack can even hear him (and Ianto knows that it's for the best if Jack can't).  
  
When Jack doesn't answer, doesn't acknowledge he heard the words, Ianto presses on, "I don't know if you'll remember. I think it's best if you don't. But I've tried so hard to follow the rules, to do what you would have wanted me to do ... and right now, I have to be a little selfish. I don't know if I'll ever get to see you again, and if I'm supposed to live the rest of my life here without you ..."  
  
Ianto pauses, scrubbing his free hand over his eyes to wipe away the rising tears. Then he pulls the battered letter from the pocket of his stolen robe and looks down at it with a sigh. "I wrote you a letter, did you know that? Maybe someday you'll get to read it, but I don't think so. Maybe I should burn it, just in case, just to keep the timeline in tact. You'd want me to do that, I think."  
  
Jack shifts a little, and makes a noise that sounds deeply pained. Ianto regards the letter in his hand and watches his own handwriting on the outside of the envelope blur from the moisture in his eyes.  
  
"I can read it to you," Ianto decides. "Even though I could just tell you what it says. I've rewritten it so many times, I know it by heart. It begins with ' _Dear Jack_ ' ..."  
  
  
Susan finds her two patients a little while later, one dead and the other bleeding from a reopened leg wound. She frowns gently at the scene, not for its macabre nature - she has seen far worse than a peaceful death and a man in a bloody dressing gown - but for the way Lieutenant Jones' shoulders are shaking. Susan has dealt often enough with death in the last few years, but that doesn't make it any easier, especially when there's someone who actually knew the lost patient involved.  
  
"Come now, love," she urges gently, moving to rest her hand on the young man's shoulder. "There's nothing more to be done here ... let's get you back to bed and tend to that leg."  
  
\--  
  
The Hub is nearly deserted when Jack arrives back, save Toshiko's presence perched like always in front of her computer terminal. She looks up when the door rolls back and Jack breezes through to his office, but she doesn't speak. Taking that to mean she has nothing, Jack leaves her alone for the time being and instead moves to sit behind his desk, considering all that transpired earlier. The apparition that looked so like Ianto, urging him to open the Rift; Jack knows it's possible, but since when has he allowed his own selfish desires to dictate his actions? Once upon a time, maybe, but Jack is a different man now. Ever since traveling with the Doctor, he's been _different_. But the Doctor has left him here for over a hundred years now, in spite of so much potential for their paths to cross again; sightings of the Time Lord are rife in the twenty-first century. Everyone Jack loves eventually leaves him, so many moving in and out of his life. As badly as he wants to hold on to them all, it never works. This time, though, it could be different; Jack has the opportunity to save Ianto Jones. The question is, will he be rash enough to take the chance?  
  
The soft sound of Toshiko's chair rolling back precedes her appearance at the office door. Jack looks up from staring into nothing and offers a questioning quirk of a brow.  
  
"What do you have for me?" he asks, trying to sound stable, in control.  
  
"Trace amounts of Rift activity at the location of the Ritz," Tosh answers. "But nothing compared to what's springing up around the rest of the city. The points are spreading further and further out, Jack ... soon, we'll have to figure out a way to neutralize it, before it gets out of our control."  
  
Jack hates the fact that Tosh feels as if she needs to warn him in such a way, but he knows that he's not himself at the moment.  
  
"Thanks, Tosh," he replies, settling back in his chair with a sigh.  
  
Tosh offers him an apologetic look. "I'm going to run out and grab a bite. Would you like me to bring you something back?"  
  
Jack shakes his head. "No, I'm fine. Thanks, though. Take a few hours if you need to ... you look like you could use a nap. I won't let the world end without you."  
  
Looking less than amused at Jack's humorous jab, Tosh backs out of the doorway.  
  
"I'll see you in a little while," she tells him, before leaving the room.  
  
Jack watches Tosh cross the Hub and take the door up to the tourist information centre. Then he shifts up in his chair and reaches into the drawer to retrieve his diary. There she is, _Rhea Silvia_ , the grandmother of Rome. Jack holds the potential in his hands to keep this city standing, or to bring it crashing around their ears even faster than it already is.  
  
He spends a long moment staring at the pages, considering the emergency protocol that no one knows about save himself ... and probably Ianto. And if Ianto is thinking about himself at all in 1941 (and Jack finds it rather unlikely), then he must have considered that Jack has the option. He must know that Toshiko has come home already, judging from the letter Tosh dug up on the Internet.  
  
Jack rises from his desk and, carrying the diary tucked under his arm, moves out into the Hub where Gwen has constructed a sort of evidence board. There are photographs tacked up there, scraps of newspaper articles and a print-out of that letter. _Give my love to J_ , Jack reads, a furrow in his brow.  
  
"It looks like that may be the only way I ever get to tell you," Ianto's voice states behind him.  
  
Jack closes his eyes and wills the ghost or vision or whatever the hell it is to go away. It doesn't, of course, and when he opens his eyes again, he can see Ianto Jones (or what looks like him) out of the corner of one. "I'm not going to do it."  
  
Ianto smiles. "I can see you're considering it. Do you think I wouldn't approve? I've already told you I do. Even if you don't bring me back, there are still lives to be saved. So many lives, Jack. Isn't that what we're here for?"  
  
"I ..."  
  
"And if I _do_ make it back to you, then doesn't that make it all the better?" Ianto presses. "Your actions will be justified, not just as a hero, but as a _man_."  
  
Jack looks down at the diary in his hands and takes a deep breath, exhaling it in a long, slow sigh. "What if it tears the world apart?" he questions desperately. "I can't - I _won't_ \- be responsible for that."  
  
"Oh, Jack," Ianto replies, his voice chiding. "If you don't do it, the world will be torn apart anyway."  
  
Before Jack can manage a retort, Ianto is gone. The captain's shoulders sag, and he crosses to the computer terminal, casting an ominous look up at the Rift manipulator as he does so.  
  
The emergency protocol feature normally requires the optical scan and approval of every member of the team, but Jack doesn't have time for that. In more than a century, he's learned Mainframe inside and out; if he couldn't hack his own system, how could he stop anyone else from doing so?  
  
Jack steals one more glance over at the board where the image of Ianto in the forties is frozen in time. From somewhere in his office, a Glenn Miller song begins to play on a turntable he knows he didn't leave on.  
  
Jack steels himself and reaches out to key in the final sequence. The Rift manipulator makes a great hum and with a burst of blue energy that shoots into the sky above Cardiff, it begins its work. Jack knows the resounding pulse might feel like an earthquake to anyone else. When Owen opened the Rift before, it was much more controlled. Now, Jack is tempting all hell to break loose ... and unfortunately for him, hell has decided to answer the call.  
  
  



End file.
